No Mourners, No Funerals
by A Penny A Word
Summary: Ten years after the Ice Court heist, the Crows are scattered across the world. To save one of their own, they find themselves returning to the city they once called home. However, Ketterdam is not the place they remember, and neither are they. To succeed, they will do anything. Even the impossible. After all, they did it once before. How hard could it be a second time around?
1. Chapter 1

**INEJ**

"Cheers fer da captain, fer widout da Wraith, we drink water 'stead o' wine! Hip Hip?"

"Hooray!"

It was a raucous night in the small fishing village of Geren, as far west in Ravka you could go without drowning in the True Sea. The rambunctious crew of the infamous schooner, _the Wraith,_ ate twice their weight in meats and drank just as much, celebrating another successful night of slaver hunting. Their charges celebrated too, trading their chains for pints of lager and bowls of peanuts. Some of them danced, some of them sang, but most of them just stared into the corner where Inej Ghafa, her long inky hair taken down from its knot to dry, nursed a steaming cup in silence.

She held up her tin in greeting, eliciting gasps from the girls and boys who could have not been more than thirteen years old. Inej stared into the red liquid, wrapping her cold hands around the cup in an attempt to chase away the chill that weeks on open water always caused. _She_ was taken once, stolen from her parents' covered wagon when she was only a bit older than they were. Sold into slavery in a country where she couldn't understand, much less communicate with the people around her. She remembered the torture, the humiliation. She also remembered that killing was sometimes the only way to keep yourself and the ones you love safe.

It seemed like lifetimes ago, when she had last seen her friends. Wylan, just growing into his newly reclaimed skin, his golden curls like sunshine on a rainy day; Jesper, whose constant optimism and companionship she had come to miss; Nina and her awful singing voice filling a rocking boat cabin towards a mission they didn't know they'd survive through; Matthias, the kind and pious Fjerdan who didn't.

And Kaz.

Seven years had passed since she'd last seen the man known as Dirtyhands, but Inej could still remember what it felt like when he reached out to her for the first time, his skin, white and as soft as satin. Could still taste his lips when he kissed her during the occasions they found themselves alone. She remembered the first scathing argument that had caused a rift between them, irreparable. Could still feel the excitement that had settled in her bones, the fear that had coursed through her veins as she set sail with Kerch behind her, no intention of returning.

Inej upturned the drink, reveling in how the sharp cider chased away her memories.

"Well well well. I didn't know the Wraith drank like the rest of us heathens."

Luca Pavlov plopped down into the stool beside her, letting out a long sigh and making a show of stretching the kinks from his broad, muscled shoulders. Inej rolled her eyes as the navigator gestured to the bartender for another tumbler of brandy.

"I don't drink," she said simply.

Luca looked incredulous as the bartender handed him a glass.

Inej had met Luca a year she had left Ketterdam, on her crew's first major raid. It was a nice night, the frosty chill withstanding. There was not a cloud in the sky as her crew worked by moonlight, Inej herself vaulting over the black water from her deck to theirs, attaching the rope ladder so her men could cross.

They had managed to free or kill all the people on board within the hour, save for the sinewy man with hair the color of acorns that surrendered from the crow's nest.

"I'm but a mercenary for hire," he had said, his green eyes like spring grass.

Inej had scoffed, pointing at him with her dagger. "You sell yourself to slavers?" Venom laced her words.

His expression hardened, a lake frozen over in the winter. His eyes were emeralds.

"I do what I must to survive," His voice was thick. Unnerving.

Inej had pondered the words since then. She wondered now, turning the empty tin cup in her palms, its warmth long gone, where she would be if she had killed her first mate like her gut had told her to.

There was certainly a time when _she_ had to do anything she could to survive. Most times, it was hard, unbearable. But if she didn't chose to survive, she wouldn't have traveled the world, wouldn't have met the people who surrounded her, her crew, whom she would trust with her life. She wouldn't have reunited with her parents, rejoined her Suli troupe, her family, even if it was only for a short while. She would have never become friends with Wylan or Jesper or Nina or Matthias. She wouldn't have fallen in love with Kaz Brekker.

 _Am I any better for it?_ Inej thought to herself, almost amused by the irony.

Jeering at memories long past, she signaled the barkeep for another cider, ready to succumb to it's lenitive warmth.

That was, until she felt a hand brush her side.

Immediately, she was the Wraith once more. Inej drew her blade, _Sankt Petyr,_ in the blink of an eye _._ As if it was that night at the Exchange, all those years ago. As if she had never left Ketterdam at all.

Some aspects of seafaring were challenging, she thought to herself as she allowed her knife to pierce skin. It was difficult to balance on the prow of her shipas it bobbed up and down on the water _,_ and her toes could scale gables better than any manila, but Inej would never forget how to use her claws. She didn't want to, and she suspected she never would. It was second nature to her, an extension of herself. She would have to pray to her gods later for the rumble of satisfaction that rolled through her as she jabbed the blade deeper into the perpetrator's neck.

The frivolity of the night ceased; it was like everyone in the pub had suddenly forgotten how to speak. Newly freed slaves dove under the tables, stifling their cries as each crew member aimed their pistols towards their captain like some sort of choreographed dance. No one made a sound. Luca seized the stranger from behind, his arms like iron bars.

The stranger's hood fell away.

"You're-" Luca growled, furious.

"Let him go," Inej ordered, her knife still at the ready.

The navigator threw her a dubious glare but did as he was told, his muscles tense.

Inej mustered a warm smile and gestured towards the frightened children underneath the tables. "Don't worry, everyone," she said, a pinch in her heart at the fear that spelled itself across their faces. "Business as usual. My friend and I are just going to have a little chat."

One by one, her crew loosened their grips on their pistols, sheathed their knives, and resumed their rhetoric. In no time, the bar was echoing with the brash atmosphere Inej had come to expect.

She made sure to smile again as she led the stranger, her knife in his side, towards the darkest corner of the pub. Luca had once told her, after she refused to accompany him to yet another tavern celebration, that she was doing her crew a disservice by declining to celebrate and drink with them at night.

"They look up to you," he had said, his expression aloof, but his eyes hard. "They trust your word, they trust you. But you have to show them that you are listening."

Now, however, was not a time for listening

"And what-" Inej asked, lowering her voice so that it was masked by the noise around her. "-pray tell, an Os Altan runner doing in a fishing town like Geren?"

Despite the precarious situation he was in, the runner smiled, revealing two rows of crooked teeth. He reached into his robe and Inej pressed harder with her blade. He slowed, holding up his hands, clutching a letter with an wax seal the color of the sky.

I

I

 **JESPER**

Weather on the plains of Shu Han was deceiving. During the day it was hot and dry. The animals gathered under the spotted trees, vying for shade, and the grasses were orange from lack of anything to drink. During the night, however, it was cold, frozen wasteland. The air was so bitter that most people avoided leaving their homes for fear the cold would eat them alive.

Jesper, however, didn't mind.

If he hadn't personally driven the stakes into the frozen ground, nothing more than a hot knife through butter in his Grisha hands, he would have been afraid of the tent blowing away with the next howl of wind. But it stayed in place, keeping whatever heat it could, the elements raging beyond. As he lay on his double wide cot, his bare body exposed to the frosty breeze coming in through the poorly constructed hide shelter, he wasn't cold. After the Ice Court job, he didn't know if his body recognized what being cold was anymore.

Like it always did, Jesper's mind wandered to Ketterdam. He hadn't realized it until he had been gone from the place for four years; it wasn't normal to yearn for somewhere that had caused him so much pain.

His father had once called him a glutton for punishment, and Jesper didn't rebuke him because he knew it was partly true. Ketterdam was the beginning of a lot of things for him. Some of those things were good: his friendships with the Dregs. His rep as the best sniper in the Stave. His whirlwind romance with the strawberry blond merchling who had stumbled into his heart.

Jesper remembered the last time he had seen Wylan van Eck. The argument that had ended it all with the merchling was on the day of Colm Fahey's funeral. It was no different from any other day in Ketterdam: overcast, drizzling, and bone numbingly cold. Jesper remembered feeling, among other things, confused. Surely when he felt so miserable, so tired, like his soul was being crushed into a million pieces, the world would show _some_ kind of reaction. But it was a normal day like any other. Jesper didn't know if that was when he had begun to hate the city or if it had started before that.

The world didn't move for people like him. It never did.

Jesper had rolled every asset he had, called in every favor, duped as many pigeons as he could, but he still couldn't gather enough money to send himself and his father home. It was where he would have wanted to be buried, Jesper knew, next to his mother on the golden plains of Noyvi Zem.

When the young merchling tried to get involved, Jesper had lost it.

The curses they had exchanged echoed through his mind like a church bell. Curt, terrible words that one human being should have never said aloud to another. Jesper loosed a long breath and scrubbed his eyes with his rough hands, willing the memory away. There was no use thinking about it now.

Now, he roamed Shu Han with the performance troupe Henrie Howlers as Genja the Sharp, the masked marksman from the uncharted West. After years of living as the guy always in the red, it was nice to be anonymous for a while. The audience didn't know that he was a screw up. They didn't know that when he was on stage he let his mind go blank. That the only thing he worried about at that moment was the way his pearl handled revolvers felt in his palm. The way the gun powder stung his nostrils. The way the crowd's cheers made him forget how much he had lost.

"What's your problem, Gen?"

Jesper glanced at the naked form beside him.

Belinda Bering was Henrie's voluptuous ticket taker and she screwed like a rabbit on jurda. She lit a stick of it and inhaled, filling the tent with its sweet scent and orange smoke. Jesper's eyes traced the swell of her breasts, the flush in her white skin, the gleam of her red hair that brought another red mop to mind...

He laughed aloud, though he didn't mean to. It was a loud, barking laugh, not real, but he did it anyway because acknowledging the hole in his gut would have been worse. Four years, and Wylan Van Eck was still the only thing on his mind.

"If I had a crow bar, I would hit you with it," Belinda said, tugging the shared blanket away from him.

One wouldn't know it from her bedside manner, but Belinda was quite pleasant at the ticket booth. In fact, it was common knowledge that Bel was the only reason the haughty Shu Han even looked the way of Henrie Howler's, poored their coffers into it every weekend. The troupe said it was because she was born and raised in the Southern Colonies, where women weren't as feisty or opinionated as the rest of the world but Jesper knew it was because no one, not even a rigid Shu merch, could ignore her generous cleavage.

"You should sleep in your own tent then," Jes retorted, stealing the jurda from her lips and taking a drag. He yanked the blanket off her as she squealed in protest. "Then you wouldn't have to deal with it."

Belinda sat up and shivered. Jesper scoffed again, enjoying the honey scent that she left behind as he wrapped himself in the blanket. After slipping on her discarded dress she turned around, her hands on her hips, appraising him.

"I can't," she stated, her eyes steady. "I sold everything. I'm following the nomads tomorrow to the coast. My summer job starts in three days."

Though he could vaguely recall her telling him about this, he couldn't find it in himself to care.

"Oh. I'm sorry to see you go," he said, staring up at the tent and taking another drag.

"Bullshit," she retorted, smiling. "But I appreciate the sentiment."

Henrie Howler's was a traveling carnival. No one ever stayed for too long, so it shouldn't have surprised him that Belinda, a girl from the Southern Colonies, wanted more than the barren fields of Shu Han.

But... if Jesper could admit anything to himself, he could admit that he had found comfort in her presence. With her it was just sex. Good sex. And that was what he needed.

"What's the job?" Jesper asked, noncommittally. _What business?_

Her eyes glittered as she plopped down next to him again, her feet waving through the air.

"There's a new liner, Jes, _Le Plaisir,_ " she squeed. "As tall as the Northern mountains and thrice as big. Made of gold and diamonds and all the things that rich people like. The captain spotted me at our show yesterday night, liked me so much that he hired me on the spot," she grabbed his hands and lined her palm with his. He noticed, for the first time, that her nails were bitten down to the quick, bloody and ragged. Jesper frowned when she spoke again.

"I'm gonna travel the world, Jes. Like the ladies of yore."

"You mean you're going to travel the world _serving_ the ladies of yore."

"Same thing."

Jesper couldn't help but be happy for her. If anyone he knew deserved happiness, it was Belinda. Kind, sarcastic, but ever warm Belinda. He closed his hand around hers and squeezed.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, digging into the folds of her dress. She pulled out a crumpled envelope, its pale blue seal stark against the parchment. "He left this for you. I think he was an admirer."

Jesper steeled. No one left him notes, not since his father had passed.

He broke open the seal and scanned the letter, a familiar tickling of fear and suffocating excitement rushing through his gut, humming through his veins

"Hey B," It took effort to keep his voice even. "Could you get me onto that liner?"

I

I

 **WYLAN**

"Sir, you've a letter. Shall I put it on your desk in the forgery?"

Wylan van Eck jolted at the sound of his butler's voice.

He had probably been standing against the gilded bedroom threshold for more than a few hours. As Wylan glanced at his mercher's watch, each little hand tuned for the major port cities off the west coast of Ravka, he saw that the sun had indeed set. It was just a few minutes after two in the morning.

Despite the time, Wylan couldn't sleep. After years of thinking his mother was dead, watching, Marya Hendriks rest was a privilege that he would never take for granted. It was one of his favorite things to do. When she slept, the lines around her eyes disappeared and she was the same woman he remembered from his childhood.

"Yes, that would be fine, Joshua. I'll get to it later..." Wylan replied distractedly, unwilling to blink, for fear his mother would disappear from his sight like a dream.

She shifted in her sleep and muttered a name beneath her breath, a smile on her face.

" _Jan..._ "

Wylan's heart froze like it did every time he heard that name. No matter where they went, no matter how many canvases or paints or brushes he bought her, they would probably never be free of his father's shadow. He screwed his eyes shut, closing over the door, hoping the darkness would chase away the ghosts of their past.

"Joshua," Wylan called, resting his forehead on the veneered wood. He pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers, hoping for some sort of relief. "While you're down there, snuff the fire-"

"What fire?"

Wylan's cheeks heated as he slowly turned around.

Hieronymus Nile was small in stature, with a swash of hair the color of corn silk and eyes as blue as the True Sea. His laborer's hands, tanned by exposure to the southern sun, snaked over Wylan's hips and around his torso. Wylan's mind when blank when Ronnie pressed a kiss on his nose, sighing in content as he stared into his eyes. Though Ronnie was the same height as himself, Wylan could feel the toned muscles in his lover's arms as they flexed against him.

For a moment they stood there in silence, simply enjoying the feel of each other, they way their bodies fit together like puzzle pieces, how their hearts beat, uncannily, in time. It should have been enough, but Wylan's mind had always traveled at one hundred miles per minute; he lurched forward, planting a long, lingering kiss on Ronnie's lips.

"I love you."

The words came out before he could process them.

Wylan hadn't many things to love in his life. He loved his mother. He loved mechanics and the ingenuity of modern science. He had once loved Jesper, and that ended exactly the way romances with barrel rats do: in a maelstrom of emotions and a hail of bullets. After leaving Ketterdam, Wylan wasn't sure if he could do it again. If he even wanted to.

Despite that, Wylan knew his words to be most honest he had ever spoken.

He tugged at the waistband of Ronnie's cotton sleeping pants, trying to bring him closer, even tough their bodies were twisted together like the plaits of a rope. Wylan's lanky limbs wrapped around Ronnie, his skin was hot and pulsing beneath Wylan's fingers.

Ronnie was a local island boy who was hired by Van Eck Holdings to maintain their southern properties. When Wylan and his mother first began vacationing there during the winter three years ago, Ronnie never failed to wave to them, to converse with them, even as Wylan and he and his mother attempted to navigate their new lives as majority share holders of the world's largest investment firm.

At some point along the way, Hieronymus Nile became a necessity to him.

Wylan heart filled with warmth at the memory. Before he could pull away, Ronnie gently held Wylan's neck and stood on his tiptoes, steering him into another, different kiss. A kiss so cosmic and searing, he could feel it in his limbs, bubbling under his skin like a million fire crackers gone off simultaneously.

Ronnie didn't pull away, but rested his forehead on his lover's, his face red.

"I've been waiting to hear those words," Ronnie whispered.

Wylan allowed his happiness to wash over him, the sensation of something familiar coursing through his veins. What was it? Perhaps a little happiness. Maybe a bit of guilt. Whatever it was, he knew that it had nothing to do with Ketterdam and that maybe, _finally,_ he could leave all that happened there in the past.

I

"I pay you to run business, not your mouth, Joshua."

Wylan supposed he should be kinder to his butler, but upon hiring the retired mine worker, he had made his stipulations clear: his mother deserved one hundred percent of his attention and, under no circumstances, was he ever to speak about the forgery above ground.

Joshua silently nodded his head.

Wylan plopped down on his chair, levying his feet onto his desk and rubbing his eyes. He had never been a night person, but circumstances required it and it left him perpetually half conscious. He wasn't sure if he would ever get used to it. Glancing around the room, the unsettling feeling of guilt nipped at him again.

He had always had a penchant for mechanics. He'd had it since he was the illiterate heir to one of the most notorious merchers in the Lid. Jan van Eck was one of the most brutal, cut throat criminals Wylan had ever known. And though he was Wylan's flesh and blood, receiving news of his death didn't bother Wylan at all.

What _did_ bother him, though, was when he also received word of his ascension in the van Eck corporate empire. After years of evading his father, working and living with the Dregs, he was sure that his father had struck him out of the line of succession. After all, Alys, his pretty young wife who was not much older than Wylan was, and borne his son Baron van Eck, not four years earlier.

" _What the hell is this, Kaz?"_ Wylan had demanded on that foggy afternoon so many years ago.

Like always, Dirtyhands was unreadable. He simply continued with his paper work at his desk, as if silence would absolve him of any part in the matter.

But Wylan new Kaz Brekker had a hand in it. Kaz Brekker had a hand in everything that went on in the god forsaken city.

" _You might be useful, yet, van Eck,"_ was all he said.

Now, at twenty six years old, one of the richest people in the world, and in love with a boy who was as beautiful as the saints themselves, Wylan wasn't sure if he regretted the turn of events. He was positive, though, that he _did_ regret how he came into it.

Turning his mind to other things, Wylan observed his surroundings. His forgery was enormous. Four walls of carved Grisha steel. They glowed devil's red in the fire's light, as did the smelting pot, a four meter kiln, a wall of new silicon molds imported from Ravka, countless barrels of metal shavings, both ordinary and rare, and every and shape and size of drift you could find.

Wylan closed his eyes again, pushing away the voice in his head telling him that he was doing something terribly wrong.

If keeping a metalwerks forgery two floors below sea level, accessible only through a hidden chamber in his closet, which he only entered when Ronnie was fast asleep was terribly wrong, then the fact that he had been doing it for years meant he was surely going to hell.

"What's this about a letter?" Wylan picked up the nondescript piece of parchment, noting the blue seal stamped with the double eagle of the Lantsov family. He shot upright in his chair, the haze of weariness that had hovered over him for years, gone.

"What the hell is this?" he exclaimed, ripping the parchment open, his eyes scanning the text.

Joshua, while snuffing the smithing fire, replied in an ominous voice.

"I'm not sure, Sir. The post master said a young man in a violet cloak left it in your mailbox."

A chill ran down Wylan's neck, despite the roaring fire. Wylan was done with Ketterdam. He was done with the Dregs and being seen as little more than a pawn in someone else's game. But it seemed no matter how far or hard he ran, Ketterdam refused to let him go.

I

I

 **KAZ**

"I don't think you're hearing me correctly, Yuffino Sol. That wasn't a question. It was an order."

Ketterdam's night was cold and bitter against Kaz's ungloved hands. He hadn't worn the things for a decade, but he could admit to himself that the leather would have improved his grip on his knife as blood spurted out of Yuf's stumped phalanges.

Undoubtedly, there would be more blood.

In the ten years since the fall of the Dime Lions, the new Dregs had climbed up out of the sewers and reigned over the Barrel with an ironclad hold. Kaz had majority shares in all harbors coming out of the Lid, and the Dreg's numbers had increased three fold. Human trafficking and slavery were close to non existent in the Stave, and no one dared question it, for fear of the wrath of Dirtyhands.

The rewards weren't without reaping, however. Every week, new hopefuls walked into the Slat boasting fire eating skills or the ability to forge the signatures of the Ravkan royal court.

Every week, Kaz told most of them to fuck off.

He had the team he wanted once. Now, he worked alone.

Kaz wiped off his knife, gesturing to Rotty and Keeg. They held down Yuf with their corded arms.

Weeks before, Kaz had received intelligence that the former Dime Lion had been visiting a club off West Stave. It didn't seem like a big deal to him, waving it off with indifference. Everyone went to the pleasure district for something: food, money, sex. Even skivs like Yuf could find something to get him off.

But when Kaz heard that Yuf, a newly minted Black Tip, caught a gondel to Third Harbor during these trips, he planned an ambush in the night.

Before the fall of the Dime Lions, Third Harbor was the epicenter of human trafficking in all of Ketterdam. It didn't mean much to him before; running whores was a lucrative business, and anything that was lucrative was fair game, as far as he was concerned.

Now, with Tante Heleen out of the way and all of the pleasure houses in the West Stave under his thumb, Third Harbor was Dreg property, in its entirety. No one set foot on it unless they were doing Barrel business, or had a death wish.

And Yuffino de Sol continued to test Kaz's patience, he _definitely_ had a death wish.

Yuf's dirty face streamed with tears as Kaz pressed his knife onto his other pinky finger. The boy cried out, his voice bouncing off the dips and valleys of Ketterdam's terrain.

"You've been meeting with someone in Third Harbor," Kaz repeated. "Tell me who that is."

"I-I," Yuf stuttered, clearly weighing his options. "Fuck! He's gonna fucking kill me!"

"And I will do worse. Much worse. If you don't talk."

Keeg twisted Yuf's arm to an unnatural angle. Yuf screamed like a strangled cat.

"H-his name is Marshall," Yuf started, fear lacing his every word. "Marshall Maginello of the Crown Suits."

Kaz turned this information over in his head. After Pekka Rollins disappeared from the Barrel, derelicts from all over Ketterdam wanted a piece of the fortune he left behind, the space in Ketterdam's shadow economy which he occupied. New gangs, most of them small fry and not even worth Kaz's attention, popped up like cases of the plague. One such gang was the Crown Suits.

From the information Kaz had dug up, Marshall Maginello was an honorably discharged corporal from the Frist Army. In fact, most members of the Crown Suits were immigrants from the Great War, veterans and orphans, people desperate with hope that their contributions to the crown had made a difference. They marked themselves with a tattoo of the spade, one half black, one half gray.

The Crown Suits began their business where every new gang began their business: in the Exchange. Not with mercher's work, but siphoning money here and there, the yuppies none the wiser until their coffers were empty. Kaz knew about it. Kaz knew that being a survivor of war made people desperate. But Kaz also knew that Ketterdam was an insular society. You had more chance of finding a decent omelet than burgeoning a gang if you didn't have an in. And if Maginello was doing business in the pleasure district, despite only having been in town for a year, he _most definitely_ had an in.

"He's not the only one you're meeting," Kaz bit. "Talk."

"I ah-" Yuf squeezed his eyes shut, a stream of Zemeni curses escaping his lips. "Onkle Felix, from the White Rose. The one that hires the girls. They're going to open a new shop where the Menagerie used to be. Said a new shipment was coming today. On a big boat."

Kaz's eyebrows knit, a knot of something bitter in the back of his throat. " _Le Plaisir_?"

Yuf nodded his head rapidly, pleading to be let go.

 _Le Plaisir_ was a publicity stunt, Kaz knew. It had been put together by King Nikolai's court to show the world that Ravka was still a force to be reckoned with in international politics. Merchers from every high society and nationality had booked tickets to make sure they would be on board of the vessel when it made history as the largest pleasure cruiser ever to sail the world. Somehow, only two years after it was announced to the world, the ship had left production and embarked on it's worldwide tour a few days ago, with stops in the major port cities across the world.

If King Nikolai, who, when Kaz had met him, was not as insane as the rest of the world thought him to be, was paying for this spectacle by running slaves...

A lightning fast stream of rage coursed through Kaz like he had been struck with a bolt of lightning. He drove his knife down, severing the Black Tip's remaining small finger, just above his second knuckle. It splashed into the canal like a minnow, disappearing into the black water.

Yuf screamed once more, his eyes bloodshot and his snot running.

"You said you would let me go!" he cried. "I told you! I told you everything!"

Kaz motioned to Keeg and Rotty, who let Yuf slump to the ground. Kaz pushed him over with his foot, forcing eye contact. At his gesture, Keeg and Rotty backed off, making their way back to the Stave. Kaz grabbed Yuf by the collar as soon as the henchmen crossed the Zentsbridge. Kaz's voice was like honing stone, rough and low.

"Normally, I would abide, Yuf," he stated. He wiped off his knife again and realized that his hands weren't cold anymore. They couldn't feel anything.

"But," he continued. "Given newly attained knowledge and the fact that you are the worst fucking skiv in the Barrel, I've come to the conclusion that, including your service to the Black Tips, you run for the Crown Suits, am I correct?"

Yuf blanched.

"And if there is something I hate just as much as a slaver, it's a runner _employed_ by slavers and is also a two timing prick who can't keep his mouth shut. If you did, I would have at least left this interaction with understanding for you. But instead, I'll leave you with this.

"Tell anyone about this, and the whole of the Barrel will know of your tryst," he threatened. "And both you and I have been around long enough to know what that means. If Wheatie finds out you've been running for the another gang, especially a gang as green as the Crown Suits, your fingers won't be the only thing to be rotting on the bottom of the canal."

He didn't stay to see if Yuf understood him. Kaz Brekker simply cracked him across the temple with his cane, pocketed his blade, and disappeared into the night.

I

It was just past three in the morning when Kaz had finally made his way back to the Slat. He had worked later than this before, had stayed awake for days in a row, even. But something about this night made him feel the weariness in his bones, as if, like his leg, exhaustion was a chronic condition he would never be rid of.

For most of the Dregs, however, life didn't start until the sun went down. They flooded the bottom-most level of the slat, where card tables, ale, and a roaring fire entertained the masses after a day of work.

"Kaz!" Rotty called from his perch on the bar, a boy he didn't recognized at his side. "What business?"

"It's done, that's all you need to know," he replied, making his way up the stairs. Kaz never made conversation with the Dregs. He wasn't in his line of work to make friends; as long as they did whatever he told them to do, he didn't care that they minded their own business while he disappeared above them.

Kaz's ascent was slow, his bad leg throbbing particularly hard as he took the steps in time. It wasn't just his legs, either. There had been an ache deep in his bones since he woke up that morning, and Kaz couldn't be sure if it was usual pains, or if it was a sign of something to come. After he usurped Per Haskell, even in the closest place he considered a home, Kaz was on edge, sure that someone was waiting in the darkness to try and take away everything he had built for himself.

 _Was this how you felt, old man?_ Kaz thought to himself. He still remembered the enraged expression on Per Haskell's face when Kaz stood before him, defiant, a mere boy of seventeen, and challenged him for the rights to his empire. How stupid he must have felt when the lieutenant, whom he had picked up like a stray dog, bit him with the mouth he had fed.

And Kaz wasn't an idiot. Sooner or later, someone would try and do the same to him. It was the way of the Barrel. The Barrel changed for no one.

Kaz pushed upward, contemplating the night's events.

He knew everything that went on in Ketterdam: when gangs took on new blood, when they kicked old blood out. Hell, he knew when every Barrel boss took a fucking shit. Marshall Maginello running slaves, however, was never in the cards. If the Crown Suits were dealing out of Dreg territory, and in collusion with the other gangs of the Barrel, at that, then the problem was a deep rooted one. He wasn't sure how far it spread, but he would find out.

 _I should send Anika and Pim out scouting..._ he thought, scrubbing his face with his bared hands. His skin felt like it was punctured with a hundred needles. _No, I'll go myself._ _Tomorrow._

Tonight, Kaz would sleep.

As he walked through the last corridor before the stairs to the attic, his quarters, he passed a door. It was barely a sliver in the wall; if he wasn't looking for it, hadn't _been_ looking for it for the past nine years, he might have missed it. Most of the Dregs had forgotten that the room even existed. The wood had aged to blend into the walls surrounding it; only it's oxidized knob breaking the illusion. Once, the room belonged to the Wraith. Since she left, he hadn't touched it.

Perhaps some foolish part of him thought she would return to him. To claim what meager living he could offer her, somewhere warm from the wet and cold of Ketterdam. Perhaps he was afraid that opening the door would release the demons that were trapped there, the ones constantly whispering into Kaz's ear.

He shook his head, dispelling the voices like cobwebs.

A swift plan came together in his head, pieces of a puzzle becoming a whole image before his eyes. Maginello was an unprecedented problem, and Kaz knew from almost twenty years of being a Barrel rat, that if he wasn't taken down, he and his would spread through Ketterdam like a cancer.

 _I'm not ready to give up on this city, Kaz_ , Inej had once told him. _I think its worth saving._

Kaz steeled himself for the final flight of stairs and limped onward.

Only when the heavy oak door shut behind him did he loose his breath. The noise from the lobby was muffled now, barely a whisper, but Kaz could still feel his agitation rise.

Sitting on his desk, ominously illuminated by his lamp, was a folded letter sealed with blue wax.

Kaz steeled. No one had access to his rooms. Not even Marjorie, the Slat's fat cleaning lady.

In his peripheral, Kaz saw a flash of light. He drew his pistol, whipping around, all thoughts of a hot bath flew from his mind.

If ever there was a reason for his irritation, he would have never guessed they would be standing, nonchalantly, against his bed frame.

Wylan van eck grinning from ear to ear, dressed in a suit and a bulbous sling bag over his shoulder.

Jesper Fahey, his pearl handled revolvers on his waist as he waved Kaz into lowering his weapon.

And Inej. Graceful, beautiful, deadly Inej Ghafa next to them, silent as always, like a storm not yet settled.

I

I

 _ **Kaz Brekker,**_

 _ **You are called to service by his majesty, King Nikolai Lantsov, son of Alexander the third, first in his name.**_

 _ **As of mid summer, Private Nina Zenik has been declared Missing in Action by Ravkan intelligence. Last seen traveling to Ravka after spending nine and a half years in Fjerda, through what was known to generations past as the Unsea.**_

 _ **As Private Zenik has knowledge of Ravkan, Fjerdan, and Kerch intelligence, she is considered a threat to national security. Discover her whereabouts, be it sovereign lands or otherwise, and return her to the Ravkan state, or Ravka will be forced to take measures into its own hands.**_

 _ **A rendezvous has been scheduled in the port town of Os Kervo, on the fourth week of the third month, with emissary to the throne, Sturmhond of the third army ship fleet,**_ **Ornitha** ** _. There, an archivist will relay news of your progress to Os Alta._**

 _ **Then, once Private Zenik is under the possession of Ravkan officials, compensation will be negotiated with his Majesty the King.**_

 _ **Regards,**_

 _ **Troian Kir-Bataar**_

 _ **Adviser to the Ravkan throne**_

I

I

The four Dregs stared, unblinking, at the parchment on Kaz Brekker's makeshift desk. They had all received identical letters, but the way Kaz glared at the note, like it covered in firepox, brought the true weight of it's message down on them.

Nina Zenik, their friend, while crossing what was once the most dangerous place in the world, had vanished.

" _'Possession',"_ Inej hissed, breaking the silence, enraged. "As if she is an _object._ A _trophy_."

"She's as good as, if she's captured by Ravka's enemies," Wylan said, his long fingers fidgeting with his bag. "If anyone finds out that she survived _jurda parem_ , whoever's got her will cut her open."

"And Ravka _won't_? She's not safe anywhere," Jesper bit. Kaz noticed that, despite talking to him, he didn't meet Wylan's eyes.

Inej nodded her head solemnly. "We have to bring her home."

" _We?_ " Kaz spoke for the first time, his voice like gravel.

Wylan, Jesper, and Inej stared at him in silence. When they had received _their_ letters, they booked passage to Ketterdam as fast as they could. It was the start of autumn, and they couldn't be sure when, once the True Sea had frozen over, travel by water would be a viable option anymore. They didn't give it a second thought. Nina would have done the same for them.

No one calculated, however, that Kaz, bastard of the Barrel, would think differently.

"But, Kaz-" Inej stepped forward, her hand outstretched.

Kaz backed away from her and she dropped her arm, a flicker of something awful running across her face. _Good,_ he thought to himself. He would rather they hate him than endure another second of this.

"She's a Dreg," Jesper spat, furious. "That ought to mean something, even to you."

" _Was_ a Dreg. That goes for all of you. You turned the tides when you left Ketterdam," Kaz returned, schooling his features into stoicism. "You're all a liability. Wild cards. I never give anything for nothing, and that much has not changed in the last nine years."

"So you want us to, what? Prove our worth to you? That this mission is just as worth it as the last job? Is the promise of the Ravkan throne not enough?" Wylan was flabbergasted.

"I wouldn't say the Ice Court was worth it," said Jesper. "I think I have perpetual frostbite on my ass."

"I don't give a damn if the saints themselvesare funding this trip. What do I have to gain for the rescue of Nina Zenik?"

On this Kaz Brekker would not falter. He had lived his life by this mantra, making sure the dues were higher than the costs of each venture he pursued. It's how he survived the Queen's Lady Plague, how he dragged himself off of Reaper's Barge and built himself an empire. It was the only thing he knew.

The tension in the attic room was insufferable, like a thick rope that threatened to tighten around Kaz's neck. Suddenly, he was very tired. All he wanted was for them to leave, go off to their far corners of the earth and leave him alone. They had done it once. They could do it again, and he'd be just fine.

Jesper's fists clenched. Wylan gaped, stupefied. But it was the Wraith who finally broke the silence.

"Fine," she said, her voice unwavering, her face unreadable. "What business, Kaz?"

After a moment's hesitation, he regaled them about the recent thorn in his side, Marshall Maginello, made clear what the objective was, tossed Wylan a wad of _kruge,_ and, while he could still stop his tongue from telling Inej all the things he had wanted to say to her, told them to get the hell out of the Slat.


	2. Chapter 2

**JESPER**

Jesper would have predicted he'd win the lottery before returning to Ketterdam.

As usual, the sky was overcast. The uneven cobblestone streets of the city smelled like piss and the cold instantly soaked him to the bone... but for some reason, Jesper couldn't stop smiling as he walked through its crooked roads.

Maybe what he found comfort in was the fact that the city hadn't changed a bit. Ketterdam would never change and deep down he knew that was what he needed, the knowledge that, in this world where someone could be alive one minute and gone the next, some things stood the test of time.

Saints knew, _he_ had changed.

He hadn't grown harder like Kaz or more lithe like Inej. No, his wasn't a physical change. But whenever he passed by one of his old favorite gambling spots, Jesper couldn't even look at it. Having once been on the other side of the card table, he knew that the innocent games of chance were not so innocent and of no chance at all. The pigeons would always be duped and innocent folk, like his father had once been, would run themselves so far into the red that they wouldn't be able to escape it. The thought made his stomach whorl.

As did seeing Wylan van Eck for the first time in six years.

He looked completely the same and like a complete stranger all at once. Wylan had grown significantly, filled out his shirt a little more, had gotten lanky and long. His dark blond hair remained a tangled mess of waves and his face was pink with his ever telling blush, but now he wore a suit. Not the gaudy and eccentric patterns of Ketterdam's ilk, but fabric of silky sapphire that made his hair look like flashing gold. A respectable suit.

When Kaz had ousted them from his office, Jesper and Inej had stayed until the early morning to reunite with the Dregs. Wylan had left without a word.

Jesper took a deep breath in and treaded forward. He didn't know where he was going, really. His room at the Slat had been taken over by some skiv named Roscoe, and, even after paying off all of his debts with the _kruge_ from the Dime Lion swindle, he didn't feel right going back to his previous squats. At least at Henrie Howler's he had a tent that was a semblance of a home. Now it was like he had just left Ketterdam all over again, pretending on the streets of Bhez Ju that he was more than some lost farm boy from the west.

Jesper's first few weeks in Shu Han were awful and even now he couldn't remember them with fondness. Six years ago, when he had boarded Land Bridge Ferry docked on the mainland shore, he suddenly realized that he'd been living in a bubble for the last decade of his life.

Ketterdam was the epicenter of the world. It drew the best and brightest minds and talents. In the city, they came together for the sake of knowledge and advancement. Jesper had spent his formative years in this bubble, dealing with people of all races and nationalities, all rallied behind Kerch flag, no matter how rotten the insides of that city were.

But one thing was always the same. It was dangerous to be a Grisha.

Jesper had taken on odd jobs at first. He waited tables where his silver tongue earned him copious tips, acted as a translator for fields that hired foreign workers because it was cheaper than hiring domestic laborers. He did all these things because he knew that if he used his menial skills as a Durast to make more money, someone would catch on sooner or later. And after all he'd lost, that was not a risk he was willing to make.

Somewhere along his walk, Jesper found himself turned towards the coast, like an invisible string was pulling him towards the water. He smelled it first. The ash of the city slowly gave way to scents of kelp and salt. Hollers of tourists were replaced by seagull calls and freighter horns. Jesper walked by the last restaurant and then the True sea was before him, it's dark blue expanse stretching beyond where his eye could see.

If he didn't know where he was going before, he definitely knew it now.

The brick house rose up out of the bluff, it's red stone like blood against the brightening night. It perched on the one open patch of healthy grass found in the whole of Ketterdam. It belonged to the only person rich enough to own grass in a city of stone.

Jesper had lived in this house. He called it home for six years after the Dregs had smuggled Kuwei Yul-bo out of the city. It was their house. His and Wylan's. Where he had helped Wylan through difficult nights of learning how to read. Where he taught Wylan to shoot. Even the pile of glass bottles was still there, glittering in shards around the fence posts.

 _You shoot like a granny,_ he had once said, his chuckle low on his breath.

 _You teach like a Druskelle,_ Wylan retorted, grinning.

It seemed like a lifetime ago.

What had brought him there? Jesper wondered. He had run it through his head a thousand times. What would do when he saw Wylan van Eck again? What would he say? Would he apologize for all the awful, nasty things he had screamed on that fateful day? Or would he gather the young mercher in his arms, pushing away the confusion, the doubt, and make love to him as if they had never parted?

His legs made their way up the paved walk way, stepping in time with his heart beat. Jesper wasn't sure what drew him here but he knew, for all the painful memories it would dredge up within him, he _had_ to speak to Wylan. Once Jesper could see him, hear him, make sure he was alright, he could walk away again.

Before he could knock on the door, it opened. It was not Wylan who stood on the other side. Unless within the last few hours Wylan had gotten a tan, straightened and bleached his hair, and taken off his clothes, save for a small towel tucked around his waist.

"Um..." the stranger said in a husky voice. "Can I help you?"

Jesper would have answered him if another voice didn't speak. A voice he was intimately acquainted with.

"Ronnie, I told you to let Joshua get it. It's not safe at night here-"

Wylan van Eck stopped in his tracks, his long fingers on the blond's hip. He was in nothing but a pair of linen slacks, his hair skewed to the side and his bare chest flushed with a color that Jesper knew, intimately, too.

Wylan might have called after him, but Jesper didn't stay to hear it. In fact, Jesper couldn't hear anything but the blood rushing through his head like a hurricane, fierce and unforgiving, washing away everything inside him like the omnipresent Kerch rain.


	3. Chapter 3

**INEJ**

When she was the best spider in Ketterdam, Inej knew people talked about her. Why wouldn't they? Her story was public knowledge: a fourteen year old Sulli girl who was sold to Tante Heleen, bought again by Per Haskell's favored lieutenant, and after that in service to Dirtyhands until the debt was paid. Be wary of the way she moved like a shadow, they said, she might be right in front of you but you wouldn't even know it.

But now, jaded by her absence, they spoke aloud.

 _The Wraith has returned._

Inej ignored them as she made her way down Zapadstraat, her arms full of the supplies she would need when she met up with Wylan and Jesper in Sixth Harbor. Her feet picked across the cobblestones, each step as careful as the last. It was a force of habit, she realized. While once she might have known the tilting city like the back of her hand, now she was rediscovering it without the pressure of unpaid debt on her back. It looked oddly serene in the daybreak. Ketterdam's morning was clear, as if to welcome her back to the place she once called home.

" _His name is Marshall Maginello,"_ Kaz had said the night before, his bare hands trailing on the map pinned to his office wall, landing on Sixth Harbor. _"He's going to be a thorn in my side. I need you to get all the information you can on him."_

" _An impressive thorn, if even_ you're _worried about him,"_ Jesper added, a glimmer in his eye.

" _Aren't you the keeper of all knowledge here?"_ Wylan asked.

Kaz had brushed the comments off, but she noticed the tick in his jaw.

" _He'll take a gondel from behind the White Rose towards Sixth Harbor early tomorrow morning to inspect a cargo load on_ Le Plaisir _, a transcontinental liner that pulled in tonight. Tomorrow is it's maiden launch from First Harbor. Get in. Get out. Report to me what you've found, and we'll see what can be done for Nina Zenik."_

It was barely past four bells, but Inej's blood was singing in a way that it hadn't since she left Ketterdam. She hadn't realized how much she missed its grayness until she and Luca sailed past the Council of the Tides tower, into the shores of the city the evening before.

" _So this is where you come from, eh?"_ Luca whistled, his posture relaxed against the prow, the picture of ease. _"I guess the apple falls far from the tree."_

" _I'm not_ from _here,"_ she said, her voice metallic. _"I..._ stayed _here for a few years, is all."_

 _S_ he tied the boat off and flipped a coin at the dock man. Her first mate fell in stride with her as she made her way past the nice stays, to the Barrel.

If Luca detected her lie, he didn't give anything away.

 _I guess I don't really know where I'm from..._ Inej thought to herself as she passed the Exchange, already bustling with merchers setting up their boards and stands in preparation for a new day.

After she left Ketterdam, Inej had spent a fair amount of time traveling before making off to the sea. Her Ma and Pa welcomed her back with open arms and once again she was spending nights under the open sky, warmed by campfire and the love of her people. They ate toasted _naan_ and danced with bare feet and at night Inej was sung to sleep by her father as she used her mother's lap as a pillow.

Years of Barrel instinct wasn't possible to be rid of, though.

Inej could never fully sleep, her eyes opened at the mere rustle of the grasses, the track of a wild hare, or the squawk of a bird. Her hands would automatically go to her hip until she remembered that her knives were locked away in her trunk, for fear of what her parents would think when she drew them at night in an attempt to fight off the ghosts that haunted her.

As good as it felt to be back with her people, to preform with them and to live alongside them again, when her mother and father approached her after a day of work, she couldn't deny their truth.

The fire was low and, in an attempt to escape the unprecedented chill that swept the Ravkan plains, the rest of the troupe had taken shelter in their wagons. All except for Inej, whose memory of a much more caustic, violent frost kept her warm.

" _Priya,"_ her mother had said, her soft hand on Inej's cheek. _"Ba and I know that, though we found you, and though you are with us, your heart is not. Not anymore."_

" _No,"_ Inej answered earnestly, squeezing her hand, afraid to let go. _"That's not true, Ma! How could I be anything but joyous to be with you again?"_

Her mother smiled her warm smile, placing a warm, ringed hand on her daughter's cheek. Inej leaned into it, feeling the warmth flow into her. She hadn't known how cold she had been.

" _Know that you will always have a home here,"_ her father said, folding her into his arms. _"But I told you this once long, long ago. You're heart is an arrow. Let it guide you."_

It was in that moment that Inej realized how worn her parents had become. In her memory, they were the young optimists who had shaped her, excited about raising a daughter in a world they only knew as magical and full of opportunity. And perhaps that was how she continued to see them, even after returning to them. But now she saw their wrinkles and the way they avoided the high rope. She saw the way they stumbled at the end of each somersault and the way their eyes cinched along the edges when they saw her. And she knew that they had changed. How couldn't they? They had gone through something she couldn't even imagine.

Through it, though, they found courage.

Even the next night when they let their daughter go, lending her their spare mule so she could travel to the Ravkan shore, tears glistening in their eyes, they had courage.

 _I won't let that courage go to waste,_ Inej thought to herself.

She continued down the cobblestones with renewed purpose. When she rounded the corner, however, she nearly tripped over herself.

Having grown up on the plains and in Ketterdam, the largest things she had ever seen, which included the incinerator shaft at the Ice Court and a whimsical a polar bear on the Fjerdan border, would have paled in comparison to the vessel that was docked in Sixth Harbor. Inej had never seen anything like it. Perhaps fifty times the size of her modest ship, _Le Plaisir_ was built entirely of gleaming Grisha Steel and partially painted the color of the Lantsov family, light blue, with the royal double eagle minted in gold on its hull. Inej wasn't sure how something so gargantuan could maintain buoyancy.

"Oy! You there!"

Immediately diving behind a stack of crates, Inej saw that the seaman hadn't spotted her, but was calling to a tall gentleman who stepped out of a gondel that had just docked opposite the liner. He was tall, at least six foot, from what Inej could see, hand had a tangle of graying brown curls that spilled out behind his top hat. He made his way to the seaman and shook his hand, discussing something in a hushed tone before a long flight of steps descended from the ship's deck. The two made their way up

Inej recalled the photograph that Kaz had showed them the night before.

 _Marshall Maginello,_ Inej thought to herself as she adjusted the rope over her shoulder. A wave of a long forgotten sensation washed over her as she bounded, light on her feet and as quiet as a mouse, up the anchor line and into the breaking dawn.


	4. Chapter 4

**Kaz**

The last of Ketterdam's summer finches sang and the autumn air was bitter as Kaz thought about what an uncharacteristically sunny morning it was. He allowed the intense rays of light that streamed through the Slat's dingy windows to burn his eyelids red. He would have never slept in this late on a normal day. It was nearly nine bells and the Barrel began business far before the sun came up. But Kaz couldn't find it within himself to move. He lay flat on his back, feeling as if he'd been hit by a freighter.

The events of the day before played through his mind. Kaz squeezed the bridge of his nose with his fingers, chasing away the massive headache that built up behind his eyes.

Who would have known that such an extraordinary circumstance would be what brought his crew back together? Kaz certainly couldn't have and he was in the business of knowing everything. After they had scattered far away from Ketterdam, Kaz had kept tabs on each member of the infamous Ice Court Crew, as the collective was known throughout the Barrel. Kaz knew that Jesper had taken up with an entertainment troupe in the East and that Wylan had dealings other than the ones that made him one of the richest men on this side of the True Sea. He knew that Inej was doing just what she said she would do when she left Ketterdam: hunting slavers and saving would be slaves from the fate that was her own. He knew that her first mate was an orphaned skiv named Luca Pavlov and that she had brought him with her into the city, though Kaz hadn't seen him anywhere. He knew that Inej was as feared on water as she was in the city back when they were young vagabonds, struggling day by day to find meaning in their suffering.

He knew all of this... but Kaz couldn't have predicted what seeing Inej again would do to him.

A sharp pain shot up his leg and Kaz groaned. His shattered knee had been getting worse with age. He had sustained the injury when he was a kid, and kids had resilience. When he was seventeen he could grit his teeth, trudge onward, and barely feel it the next day... But that was ten years ago. He was damn near thirty now and gritting his teeth just made the pain worse. He wondered how much longer his leg would last before he truly _was_ a cripple.

Kaz found that the prospect of not being able to walk didn't scare him as much as he thought it would. If he couldn't walk, there would be no more running from all of the things he'd run from his entire life. And maybe he was tired of running. _Most_ people were tired of running after a few miles, but Kaz had been running for thirteen years. He would never spend his days in his office like Per Haskell, building model ships and rotting within the walls of the Slat while his goons did his dirty work, but everything Kaz had become accustomed to would no longer be a possibility. There would be no next puzzle and no next mission. There would be no more end game. It would simply just end.

"Kazzy?"

Kaz slung the pistol from under his pillow and pointed it in the direction of the voice. It sounded like the reverb of a wind chime during a summer day and it came from behind the closed over bathroom door. Steam curled underneath it and a satin shift hung on the doorknob, fluttering from an unseen breeze. All of Kaz's muscles tensed... Until he remembered that he'd called on Rosette Windsor early that morning to keep him company.

The petite heiress stepped out of the restroom and steam billowed from behind her like clouds. In the sunlight she truly looked like an angel, some kind of unearthly nymph that had been dropped in the middle of his musty room. Her white skin was tight and supple from her shower, misted and flushed in all the right places. Her damp, golden curls hugged her head and shone in the morning light like corn silk.

Rosette eyed him, her perfectly plucked eyebrow piquing up towards the sky. She looked from the pillow to his face, surely suspecting the firearm that lay beneath his head, before shrugging on her slip and laying down on the empty side of the mattress. She smelled sweet, like roses on a rainy day. Kaz tried not to wince when she knocked against his knee.

Kaz had marked Miss Windsor two years earlier for a job involving her father, Harvey Windsor of Windsor Current, a Ravkan company specializing in electronics and modern technology. The company was his brainchild, the culmination of seven years at Ketterdam University and his dream to build a better and brighter world for his only daughter, Rosette.

That spring, Windsor Current was planning on rolling out its new incandescent street lamps to the whole of Ketterdam, including the Barrel. The state of the art lamp would supply photo activated lighting to the dark alleys and side streets of the city, giving the the gangs and criminals nowhere to hide. Kaz had ears on the pitch meeting and was amused at the idea. If you were a _good_ Barrel rat you didn't need the shadows.

So instead of fighting it, Kaz bought twenty percent of Windsor Current's stock, which cost a sizable stack and more than a few protests from the Dregs. It turned out to be one of the smartest investments he'd ever made because, afterwards, they became the richest gang in Ketterdam when the company was contracted to work on _Le Plaisir._ Kaz's hold on the city was as good as gold. And after some choice words with Windsor Current's top chiefs and executives, nothing could touch him.

Nothing, save for the unyielding infatuation of Rosette Windsor.

Kaz trailed his naked hand up the curve of her waist and grinned to himself when she shivered in delight. He could predict what every touch would do to her. And he knew when he reached further down, Rosette would give herself to him completely.

She grabbed his arm, Kaz stiffened. "Are you alright?" she asked in a husky voice.

Kaz stared at her, not quite sure what to say. The depth of her affection made him uncomfortable, a feeling that Kaz wasn't unfamiliar with. When he was with Inej, he never felt uncomfortable. She didn't talk nearly as much as Rosette did, and Inej's interests were in places other than the latest fashion trends and Ravkan gossip. But it was enough for him because Inej understood him like no one else did. They had a shared past, a shared trauma, a shared destiny. A destiny marred with shadows that they would never escape.

But with Rosette he knew the outcome of all the equations. And for now _that_ was enough _._

So why screw up a good thing?

Kaz seized back his arm and pushed into her, grinning again when a blush spread down her neck.

Rosette moaned and threw her leg over his hips, sitting astride him with a cocky expression on her face as if she'd bested him. It took everything Kaz had not to roll his eyes.

"As much as I'd love to roll around with you all day," Rosette said, bending over and trailing wet kiss down Kaz's bare chest. "I have a prior engagement that will steal me away for a while."

Kaz clenched his jaw at the slick sensation of Rosette's tongue sliding down his body. She was referring to Windsor Current's contracted work on _Le Plaisir._ Rosette and her father, being a large benefactor and engineer on the liner, were set to join the rest of the world's aristocrats on its maiden voyage. Had things not turned out the way they did, he would have not seen Rosette again until the following spring.

Now though, with newly acquired information about the Crown Suits and their dealings, Kaz silently adjusted his plans while Rosette continued down his torso. He was positive that keeping her around instead of disposing of her was the best choice. Her connections would be more crucial now than ever before.

"Another arranged suitor?" Kaz kept his voice aloof.

Rosette looked up from her perch below him. She bit her lip and her blue eyes widened in glee.

"Why, Kazzy, you _never_ ask about where I'm going," she purred, her tinkling chuckle absorbed by the mountains of dusty books and paper surrounding them. "Could it be you're actually jealous?"

Kaz almost laughed. Jealousy? Jealousy was something he hadn't felt in a long time. A child's emotion. And Kaz hadn't been a child since Jordie's death.

He gripped Rosette's slim hip, flipping her over so that he was in dominant position. Kaz pushed upward and let the sounds of her ecstasy fill him. He had woken up in a grog but now his mind was wide awake, zinging with countless ideas and possibilities. If it was because of Rosette, he couldn't say. He only knew that when she fell apart underneath him, her cries muffled when she sank her teeth into his shoulder, that his plan was going to be bulletproof. And in his world, in his business, that was an advantage.


	5. Chapter 5

**WYLAN**

Wylan would never get used to people calling him 'sir.'

For the majority of his life, no one even knew that he was Jan van Eck's son. He lived as a shame, an embarrassment kept in the shadows. And even when the rare person had knowledge of this, usually his father's close friends and business partners, they called him 'runt', 'moron', or, Wylan's personal favorite, 'useless'.

But after nine years of using the skills he learned while in service to the Dregs, he was able to make that part of his past a distant memory. By the time he had moved permanently to the Southern Colonies, most of his father's acquaintances were dead. Now _he_ was Sir van Eck. And this was _his_ empire. And as Sir van Eck he was offered the largest, most extravagant penthouse suite aboard the _Le Plaisir._

"You'll get used to it. I certainly did," Wylan told Ronnie, who was gaping at the opulence around them.

Wylan left his awestruck boyfriend alone, stepping into the bathroom and smoothing out his vest. His part of the stakeout was pivotal. As a majority sponsor of _Le Plaisir,_ a deal he'd made months before they'd received news of Nina's disappearance, he'd been granted access to the ship on its maiden voyage. Later, when he made his way to the ballroom for the opening ceremonies, Inej and Jesper would be in place and they would comb the ship for what they needed.

 _Jesper..._

Wylan's eyes lingered on his reflection and at the faint tan line encircling his finger. For years Wylan had not thought about the ring that used to sit there, a sleek, slate gray number that resembled the eyes of the man who gave it to him. He had almost completely forgotten about it until an antsy, gun slinging Zemeni showed up at his doorstep the night before.

After Jesper had taken off, it took several hours for Wylan to calm Ronnie down. To convince his young lover that Jesper was nothing to him, had been nothing to him for a long time.

"But he was something to you _once?_ " Ronnie had pouted, unable to move as Wylan had backed him into a corner. Joshua was in the kitchen, speaking with the cook and wrapping up his morning duties. After that, he would head to Sixth Harbor ahead of them. They had the house to themselves.

Wylan threw his hands in the air, anxiety coursing through him like a snake. It had taken just one day for everything Wylan had built for himself to feel like it was crumbling around him, slipping through his fingers like sand. And it was all because of Jesper Fahey.

" _Everyone_ in this damn city was something to me once," Wylan exclaimed, attempting in vain to mask the panic in his voice. "You don't know what I had to do to survive here."

"I _would_ know if you just _told_ me," Ronnie pleaded. "You know everything about me but have never told me a damn thing in return. Up until a few days ago, I didn't even know you were _from_ here. I didn't know that you could navigate a boat or have a brick house on the sea. I don't know anything! Do you even _want_ me to know?" Ronnie glared at him in defiance.

Wylan backed away as he had been punched in the gut. Ronnie's words hurt more than he would ever know, but on this topic Wylan was unmovable. If he loved Ronnie, which he did with a fervor that he couldn't have ever dreamed, why the hell would he subject him to all the shit that happened during his own formative years? Those things deserved to stay where they were. In the past.

Wylan hadn't realized that Ronnie had left the room until Ronnie was halfway up the stairs. Wylan rushed towards him, locking him in an embrace, desperate for him to see reason. Ronnie struggled and fought, but Wylan was afraid that if he let go, Ronnie would run away and he'd be alone once more. Alone like he had been all of his life until he found his mother. Until he found the Dregs.

Instead, Ronnie melted into him, as if knowing that was exactly what Wylan needed to calm down. Wylan couldn't hear anything past the ringing in his ears. He couldn't speak for the vice in his throat. They stood on the stairs in silence. The only sound that surrounded them was Wylan's uneven breath.

"I loved him, its true," his voice was barely a whisper. He could hear Ronnie's heart thundering through his flesh. "It didn't start out that way. We barely got along... but, somewhere along the way, it became it. And I loved him with everything I had," he continued, holding Ronnie in front of him and meeting his gaze. "Deep down, I think I'll always love him. But that love is _nothing_ compared to what I feel for you."

Wylan planted a simmering kiss on Ronnies lips, cradling his cheeks in his hands. It was as if admitting this truth, both to himself and to his lover, broke down the wall that had been growing in between them ever since they had set sail for Ketterdam.

"You've got a way with words, Van Eck. I'll give you that much," Ronnie had responded.

Wylan shook his head, dispelling the memory and cobwebs that four hours of sleep left in its wake. He smoothed out his vest again and went the bed, laying out his jacket and tools from his suitcase in preparation for the evening.

That was when he saw Ronnie splayed on the floor, his skin white as a sheet.

The blood drained from Wylan's face and everything in the penthouse suite froze in time. Ronnie was still. For a split, irrational second, Wylan was sure it was because the ghosts of his past, the ghost of his father, had come back from the dead to reap what he had sown.

Wylan all but jumped over the bed and cradled Ronnie in his arms. Tears burned his eyes, but he refused to blink. If he did, it would be real. His tears would land on Ronnie's still face and it would be the end of him. Through his panic, though, Wylan felt a shallow intake of breath against him and almost dissolved. He placed his hand on Ronnie's forehead. It was hot to the touch.

"It's only a fever," Wylan choked. He couldn't recognize his own voice. It didn't sound like the voice of a twenty six year old millionaire. It sounded like the voice of someone with too much to lose. He carried Ronnie over to the bed and tucked the blankets tightly around him. "I told you not to stand out on the damn deck while we sailed," Wylan bit. He wasn't sure who he was talking to. "Nothing can prepare you for that kind of chill, especially since you've lived in the Southern Colonies all of your life."

Ronnie's eyes fluttered open, glossy, and shadowed with something Wylan couldn't pinpoint.

Wylan buried Ronnie in the rest of the available linen and opened every curtain to the Grisha glass windows. The sun immediately warmed the room and Wylan expelled a breath. When he returned, the room would hopefully be hot enough for Ronnie to sweat out his sickness.

He forced himself to calm. It'd been five years since he'd had a panic attack, and upon returning to Ketterdam he had two in consecutive days. If that didn't show that the city was bad for him, he didn't know what did. Wylan braced himself against the wall, breathing in and out in ten counts as his therapist had instructed him to do all those years ago. Images flashed through his head of years past: metal shavings piercing skin. The impact of brass knuckles against his face. The dim light of the chapel where he thought his life would end.

Wylan dragged himself to the intercom that connected to Joshua's quarters to order tea when he heard Ronnie speak. His voice was barely a voice, muffled by the blankets and his half consciousness. Wylan had to put his ear by Ronnie's mouth to make sure that he wasn't hearing anything.

"How would _you_ know about sailing? How would a mercher's son know anything..." His voice was flippant. Accusatory. It broke Wylan's heart.

"Go to sleep, Hieronymus," Wylan whispered.

He kissed Ronnie on the forehead before throwing on his suit jacket, straightening himself, and made his way towards the ballroom. Despite all of the words left unsaid between them, Wylan couldn't afford to be distracted. Nina's life was on the line and his job was something only he could do.


	6. Chapter 6

**INEJ**

The ballroom of _Le Plaisir_ was in full swing when Inej took her place behind the bar. It had taken her longer than expected to shimmy through the port window and find her way to the center of the ship. The last time she'd done something similar, she was eighteen and Ketterdam was her home. Now, she discovered that her once lithe body had filled out in parts that weren't compatible with the life of a spy in the city.

From the limited intelligence Kaz had provided them with and that which she had gathered from her old contacts, she knew that this launch party hosted some of the richest and most influential merchers in Ketterdam, and she could see why. Though the style of the upper class had changed since she was young, from patterns to solid colors, bright palettes were still the norm. Every person who walked into _Le Plaisir_ was dressed in jeweled multitone fabric and dripped in diamonds and gold. And though Inej only wore the standard black and white attendant attire, she had no trouble blending in as most of the wait staff were migrant workers.

She made note of every exit within the ball room and picked up a glass and polishing rag, ready to blend into the shadows... until she realized that she had no idea what she was doing. The other bartenders around her might as well have been speaking in Fjerdan. She couldn't understand a lick of their vocabulary as they conversed with each other, talking about rocks and swords and other things Inej had no idea were involved with bar tending. But she'd been to enough bars and taverns in Ravka. How hard was it to pour a drink?

Inej hadn't noticed that a young woman was speaking to her until her discarded napkin hit Inej in the face.

"One dry bourbon and a _kvas_ berry cocktail for the miss," the old man on her arm said, enunciating his Kerch as if she couldn't understand basic speech. His partner huffed beside him, mumbling her her breath.

"Father, I can get my own drink," the girl huffed. She turned to Inej, her lips pursed. "I'll have a virgin martini. Hold the _kvas._ "

The man rolled his eyes. Whether it was at his daughter or at herself, Inej couldn't tell.

The man was older, with papery white skin and gray hairs that were slicked back with something that looked like whale fat. His escortee was a dainty little thing, dressed in a sharply cut gown that was so pink, Inej wasn't sure how such a color was made. They raised their eyebrows at her, whispering between themselves and laughing at an unheard joke.

Inej realized that though the style of the merchers of Ketterdam had changed, they themselves had not. It wasn't their clothes that made them, but their demeanor. They stared at her from across the counter like birds of prey, with something malicious in their eyes and sneers on their faces. _Every_ person in the ball room had that look, actually, and Inej was violently reminded of the Menagerie. A business that, on the surface, was made of fantasies and satin, but was actually built on the back of slaves. It reminded her of standing in the glass display windows, watching the world's cruelness play before her and wondering how she became a part of it.

Inej dropped the glass that she was handling in the sink and it shattered to pieces. The young woman before her squeaked, screaming obscenities at her, words that a woman so young had no business in speaking.

" _This_ is why you're going to change the world, Dad," the girl swatted at the unseen debris that landed on her bodice. "Ketterdam is too full of people who can't work or contribute. Too full of _rats._ "

 _Why did I come here?_ Inej thought to herself as the girl continued to complain to her father. She knew, logically, that it was because she wanted to save her best friend. That Kaz wouldn't help them if they didn't do this for him, that it was the only way. But the explanation seemed ridiculous to her now as the walls of the largest liner in the world closed around her. Inej forced herself to breathe, blocking out the shine of the jewelry, the sickeningly sweet perfume, the bright colors and all that they reminded her of...

"I'm so sorry, Sir," came a familiar voice. "Our lovely Priya is new to this work. Take your drinks on the house. Or boat as I should say."

Inej opened her eyes to find Luca handing the man a tumbler and a stem glass, a stupidly dashing smile pasted on his stupidly chiseled face. After a minute of inspecting the glass, as if to discern if Luca might have poisoned it, the man gave a grunt. The girl sniffed her drink as well and, finding it not too offensive, pulled herself and her companion away.

"I've never seen you so angry, Captain" her first mate said, concern in his eyes.

"I just-" Inej found she couldn't put her feelings into words. How could she explain the awful memories Ketterdam held for her? There _were_ no words. "What the hell are you doing here?!" Inej changed the subject under her breath. "I gave you a specific mission. You were supposed to go to the smith's and-"

"Grab you these?" Luca had a smug smirk on his face when tossed her a paper wrapped package. It took all Inej had inside her not to squeal like a teenage debutante. She stuffed the package in her apron, suddenly forgetting the awful mood she was in.

"So, other than this Maginello guy, what are we looking for?" Luca asked.

Inej paused. While she was glad that Luca had agreed to follow her to Ketterdam, glad that she had at least someone from her crew to watch her back, she still hadn't told him about the mission at hand. Scoping out the leader of a rival gang was simple to explain. Saving Nina Zenik, polyglot, soldier, and possibly fugitive, was not.

"I'll fill you in later," Inej said. "For now, stay alert."

Luca nodded, turning to a new patron that leaned against the bar.

Inej decided that tending bar was not her strong suit and stepped out from behind the counter. She wandered the ball room picking up discarded glasses and further scoping out the terrain.

 _Le Plaisir_ was as ostentatious on the inside as it was on the outside. While the tables, chairs, and gilding was sculpted from gold, Lantsov blue was the main color of focus. It was strewn through the marble counter tops that made up every flat surface and in the banners that hung over them, proudly displaying the double eagle in all of it's regalia. It was in the dress of the guards who took the name and information of every attendee and in the cushions of every seat and table. The implicit meaning was obvious, even to someone who knew as little about political machinations as Inej.

She clocked Jesper at hostess' stand, chatting up the voluptuous girl who worked there, and Wylan making his way towards them, though he was stopped every few feet by an eager interloper. Inej didn't have time to think about what that confrontation would be like. She swiveled her head, searching for Maginello's gray bun and mustache. Instead she saw the girl, her father nowhere in sight, staring at her like she was a germ.

Her voice was a high whine and had Inej not been nose to nose with her, she would have been sure that it was just steam escaping the carafe on a nearby table. She was pretty, prettier than most people, with a round face and blonde curls styled in the coif that was popular with the upper crust. She fluttered a fan against her face, as if blocking Inej's scent from her petite nose, wafting her rose water scent into Inej's face

"Are you deaf?" She spat.

Inej slapped on a fake smile as she had seen Luca do so many times in the past, though the last thing she wanted to do was talk to her. Each second of her ridicule felt as if time was slipping through her fingers. Time that could be spent helping her friend.

"How can I help you, ma'am?" Inej asked.

The woman rolled her eyes. "For the fifth time. Where is the ladie's room?"

Inej pointed in a random direction, watching the girl harrumph away in a flurry of pink tulle... when she saw Maginello speaking in the corner of the ball room with the ships' captain.

Inej moved quickly towards the pigeon. By traveling with the flow of the crowd, she masked her beeline, but not before passing by the bar and stealing Luca's eyes for a split secod. She signaled him with a touch to her brow, a subtle communication method that they'd perfected on _The Wraith_ which they mostly used for hostage situations or when one of them was staking out a slaver depot.

Luca nodded at her sign and ducked out of the ball room. And then Inej was alone.

Maginello and the captain made for one of the many hallways that emptied into the ballroom, she paused. It was guarded by two beefy looking sentries, sentries that made Matthias Helvar look like a twig.

Inej scanned the ball room again. Every other hallway was left open, socialites coming in and out of the inner bowels of the liner as they pleased. Whatever was at the end of the tunnel that Maginello and the captain just disappeared into, one that expelled a frigid air that smelled like brine and sickness, it couldn't be anything other than bad news.

l

Slipping past the guards wasn't an issue for Inej, but calming her nerves was.

For the past seven years she had been on either the plains or the open sea, where the grass and ocean's roar absorbed her every sound. Now there was no tree in sight and the closest thing to an ocean was the damp mildew that collected in the crevices in the walls. Inej was wearing the standard wait staff uniform which included wooden clogs, and no matter how hard she tried, the heels clicked against the metal floor.

When she stepped on what felt like a bolt and rolled her ankle, Inej bit the inside of her cheek to stop the stream of curses that would have probably come out of her mouth. She raced into a shadowy nook just as Maginello looked over his shoulder in suspicion. Inej breathed hard through her nose. Whatever he was up to, Inej thought as she discarded the clogs, he didn't want to be found out.

Inej waited for their footsteps to be a safe distance away before fishing out the paper package that Luca had given to her earlier that morning.

She had left her rubber soled slippers with the fabrikator that lived and worked out of the back room of Effie's Eats, a dinky restaurant on the edge of the Barrel. She didn't think she would need them when she left Ketterdam. No one in a Suli caravan needed an assassin. Her people were not a people of blades and blood, but people of air and earth and sky.

But when Inej stretched the stiff rubber over her feet, flexing her toes against the nubs that gripped onto the steel floor with no trouble at all, she felt like herself again. At least a version of herself she had forgotten existed. A heroine with who didn't abide with laws like gravity.

It was like the slippers activated some kind of muscle memory that allowed Inej to leave her physical form and float down the corridor, as soundless as a ghost. Inej took off after Maginello, keeping within a few feet of him and the captain. They were none the wiser.

Inej caught the tail end of their conversation. They spoke in hushed voices, as if they were afraid someone would hear them even though they were alone.

"The shipment's good," the captain said. "They'll work better than the last ones. Got 'em from Shu Han. I'd stake my career on it."

Inej's heart froze.

 _Slavers._

Before Inej had left Ketterdam, Kaz had made her a promise, which was rare. Dirtyhands was not in the business of making promises. He had told her this countless times. But they had promised each other that they would purge the city, their city, of the stolen. Of those who were in Ketterdam against their will. To give the people back their right of choice, even if that choice was often one of crime. And since the higher powers didn't care what happened in the Barrel, Kaz would. He would dole punishment to anyone who would even think of crossing this promise.

But Inej had not seen Kaz in seven years. She wasn't sure where his loyalties were anymore.

Inej reached for her belt only to find that her knives weren't there. She remembered that she had left them hidden belowdecks on _the Wraith_ along with Luca's things.

 _No matter,_ she thought. She'd learned countless ways to kill men with her hands alone.

She followed them in silence for a good twenty minutes. Inej felt like they had traveled at least a few miles underneath the ballroom, which was plausible considering how massive the liner was. Somewhere along the way, the mildew turned into black mold that, despite the darkness, stood out in dark patches all around her. Inej tied her apron around her mouth. They slowed in pace and soon reached a door.

Unlike the rest of the ship, the door was plain, made from industrial copper and wood rather than Grisha Steel and gold. It was secured with a padlock as big as Inej's face. From the dim lamp that the captain had been carrying, Inej could just about make out the sign on the door: _Danger. Keep Out._

A sign made to deter anyone who might find their way down there.

A sign that would only keep Inej away if she was dead.

The captain fished out a key from his pockets and inserted it into the padlock. The click was like a gunshot.

The room beyond was bright, despite the depths to which they had descended, as if there was a sun roof somehow leaking light into the locked chamber. From the echo of Maginello and the captain's receding footsteps, Inej gauged that the room was enormous. Perhaps as big as the entire ship itself. When she peered through the crack in the door just before it slammed shut, Inej couldn't have been prepared for what she saw.

She turned on her heel and ran back up the tunnel, the scent of black mold replaced by scents of fear and metal and death. She had heard the groans and saw the chains and wasn't sure if her quick breath was because she was because of her sprinting or if because she was hyperventilating.

Whatever was going on with Kaz, with Ketterdam as a whole, no good could come of it. Inej knew it in her gut. It couldn't be reconciled or rationalized. The last thing Nina needed was this on her tail, especially with Ravka hunting her down, too.

There had to be another way to rescue her, one where Kaz was absent from the equation. And if there wasn't, then Inej would make one, no matter the cost.


	7. Chapter 7

**JESPER**

Jesper was standing by the ticket kiosk when Inej hurried towards him, a petrified expression on her face.

He had been listening to Belinda regale him about the tour of the Lid that the staff of _Le Plaisir_ were given that morning, one of her many new found privileges that she made sure he knew about. She went on about the Komidie Brute, gushing at the spectacle of their performance. He, himself, had seen that particular show about a hundred times, but there was something refreshing about experiencing it again through her eyes. The eyes someone who saw the city without the ugliness underneath.

"Oh!" Belinda exclaimed after finishing up with her customer. "There's this divine place on the edge of Pelugastraat. They have the best waffles I've ever tasted."

Jesper chuckled. "That's Effie's Eats. Nina loved those waffles."

"Who's Nina?"

Jesper paused, unsure how to answer.

Nina had been on everyone's mind since they each received their respective letters, and Jesper could say the same. No one had seen her since she left on a _gondel_ that contained her dead lover, Matthais Helvar. Jesper parsed through the feelings of anxiety that swirled inside of him to try and find an honest answer. One he could tell her when he saw her again.

"She was... my friend. When I lived here," Jesper said simply, throwing back his tumbler of whiskey.

Belinda nodded. She had a gift for reading people, which came in handy with her job, but reading him especially because they'd spent so much time together at Henrie Howlers. She knew when he didn't want to talk, when he couldn't. Jesper loved her infinitely more because of it.

Belinda turned back to the counter to help her next customer and Jesper continued his stake out. Every now and again his heart would race when he saw an old gangster or merch that he owed money to... until he remembered that he had paid off his debt years ago. He had nothing more to fear. No one would jump him in a dark alleyway in order to collect, but a lifetime of being in the red was hard to get rid of.

There were actually more people that Jesper _couldn't_ recognize, which surprised him. He'd only left the city five years ago, but it seemed as if there was a whole new generation of merchers and gangsters that had sprung up. He couldn't decide if he felt out of touch or just old.

Jesper clocked Hoede with a woman far too young to be his wife on his arm, exiting one of the many hallways that emptied into the ballroom. The last Jesper had heard of him, Hoede had stepped down from the Merchant council after the massacre at his estate had aired out unsavory facts about what he did in the dark to his help. It wasn't that no one else did those things, Jesper thought to himself. Grisha weren't seen as humans in most of the world, and Ketterdam was no exception. It was public shaming that dethroned the former Councilman. When Jesper was in the Dregs, Hoede was one of the most powerful men in all of Ketterdam, and now, he was simply a man with a lot of money.

That was when, coincidentally, Wylan van Eck walked into the room.

 _Shit,_ Jesper thought, searching for escape routes.

Wylan was dressed in another suit, something that the Wylan Jesper knew would have never worn. _That_ Wylan had been a scruffy sixteen year old runaway who probably thought thread count was a unit of measurement. _That_ Wylan had lived in a louse ridden room that he rented down the street from the Slat, refusing to board with Barrel rats.

 _This_ Wylan walked tall, his back straight and one foot in front of the other, like he was marching. His curls were pulled into a neat bun at the base his head, his chin shadowed with a chic stubble. He made eye contact with everyone who greeted him. It seemed like they all knew him somehow.

Jesper had been dreading this meeting since he'd seen Wylan at his beach house with his new lover that morning. The boy was young, eighteen at the least, and had muscles in places where Jesper only had limbs. Thought it had been the early morning, his skin was golden and his hair glowed like stars... in summation he was pretty much the opposite of everything Jesper was.

Jesper snorted and Wylan had the grace to look affronted when he stopped at the ticket counter.

Like clockwork, Belinda's signature smile was blinding.

"Good afternoon, Sir van Eck."

Wylan blinked.

"You know me?" he asked, his eyebrow raising.

Belinda flipped her hair. Jesper rolled his eyes.

"Everyone knows you," Belinda giggled. "You've been quite the talk since you walked on board with that beautiful boy on your arm."

"People should find more interesting things to talk about..." Wylan said to himself, his fingers tapping on his vest. "I'd like to purchase a few rooms, if that's alright. I know the tickets were sold in advanced, but-"

"But of course we'd make an exception for a van Eck! Your name is practically stamped on the hull," Belinda declared enthusiastically. She clicked a few buttons on her register. "How many rooms? And shall I list them under your name?" She asked.

There was a minute of silence before Jesper realized that Wylan was looking at him, waiting for him to speak.

The plan had been for Wylan, after the three of them had infiltrated the liner, to reserve rooms for them so their presence aboard the ship wouldn't be questioned. After all, Wylan van Eck renting out the most luxurious liner in the world was no problem. It was expected. But Wylan van Eck walking aboard with two Barrel rats as his companions would have stirred too much of a ruckus, considering the name he'd made for himself.

It _had_ beenthe plan, but Jesper had already been aboard the ship since four bells that morning after getting away from Wylan as fast as he could. He had showed up at Belinda's kiosk, sweating buckets and breathing like a horse. Something on his face must have told her all she needed to know because she let him into her room in the staff quarters until passengers began boarding.

 _Stay as long as you like, Jes,_ she had said. _After all, what are friends for?_

"I'm good," Jesper answered Wylan's silence.

Wylan nodded tersely and chatted with Belinda for longer than Jesper thought necessary. They exchanged friendly banter and conversation, Belinda even letting out a few genuine chuckles. Jesper narrowed his eyes at them. They would have kept on talking, too, had he not been stolen away by a passing mercher.

Jesper made for the upper levels until Belinda smacked him on the arm.

"Hey! What was that for?"

"How the _hell_ do you know Wylan van Eck?" Belinda demanded. She yanked him into her, speaking low and fast, as if they were sharing an enormous secret.

Jesper pushed her away, massaging his arm. "Does it matter?"

Belinda's face lit up and she clapped her hands over her mouth. She leaned in again, her expression that of a giddy school girl, and Jesper couldn't help but smile with her, even if Wylan was a sore subject. Belinda got like this over everything. It was one of the things he loved about her, that she was never bogged down by the details of life, but reveled in the joys of it. Jesper had never known anyone to be so _good_.

Her eyes widened. "Is he that ex boyfriend you never talk about?" she asked.

Jesper's stomach dropped.

"Ex boyfriend? What are you talking about?" he tried to laugh it off, but his voice was caught in his throat.

"The one who gave you that ring you keep in your bag. You mentioned him once, when we first met," Belinda's joy spilled over in pink pools on her cheeks. "Who would have known that Genja the Sharp would have had such high rollers in his life. Why didn't you tell me?" She gushed.

"I don't want to talk about this here, Bel," Jesper gritted his teeth.

"But... It's just so _delectable_ , star-crossed love-"

"I said drop it. We don't have this kind of relationship."

They were surrounded by people, ambient voices and a small orchestra in the corner, but all Jesper could hear was the ringing in his ears.

Belinda's eyes glossed over. She didn't say anything. She didn't have to. As well as she could read him, Jesper could read her, knew her like they had known each other for their whole lives. He saw something crack behind her stare. She turned back to the register, checking in the next customer in silence. Jesper reached out to her before stopping himself.

"You know," Belinda finally said, aside. "I might be a pair of legs you get lost in occasionally, but that doesn't mean that we're not friends. It was my mistake for thinking this was mutual."

Her words were a hot iron to Jesper's skin.

Of course he knew Belinda was his friend. Perhaps his best friend, and Jesper had so few of those in his life. But she didn't know what feelings were raging within him since they had made land the day before. They were feelings of betrayal and abandonment, mixed with the love that he'd felt since the day he'd met Wylan van Eck. Confusing feelings. Feelings that made him feel like a stupid teenager who thought there could be good things in his life. Feelings that he'd shoved down, deep inside him. He wasn't sure if he was ready to confront them. Not yet, anyway.

That was when Inej accosted him by the bar, her breath quick and her eyes frantic.

"Follow me," Inej huffed. "Now."

l

Jesper did and immediately regretted it.

The room was stocked, wall to wall, with firearms.

Not just any firearms, but _Obelisk_ firearms.

Obelisk was a black market arms dealer whose work Jesper was well acquainted with. In fact, the guns he wore now were Obelisk made. He'd purchased them when he first crossed the Land Bridge into Shu Han after leaving Ketterdam, as he had hocked his pearl handled revolvers when his father had died. No matter where he was, he felt naked without anything on his belt.

It turned out to be one of the best investments he'd ever made. Jesper wasn't a blacksmith, but he knew guns. And when he held his Obelisk revolvers, in the middle of the ring or otherwise, Jesper knew that he would make every shot. He didn't know if it was his own skill or his Grisha abilities, and he didn't care. It was like the guns were made for him.

Obelisk sold primarily to Ravkan hunting parties and royal collectors, but Jesper knew that their reach went farther and into the darker recesses of society. Since the end of the War, people wanted to defend themselves from the things that lurk in the dark, even after the Darkling perished. But money was scarce and poverty was rampant. He'd seen Obelisk and Obelisk counterfeits being hocked in alley ways and traded under the cover of Henrie Howler's big top.

If Obelisk was supplying guns to Maginello and his cause, whatever that cause was, it wasn't a one man job. Kaz had told them that Maginello had been a soldier with the First Army. That meant that he most likely had accomplices all around the world.

"This is insane," Jesper shook his head as if the racks of guns around him was a mirage he could dispel. The scent of steel hit him over the head like a discharged cannon ball. "Inej, what the hell is going on here?"

The Wraith walked around a cache of guns strapped to a support beam, her fingers skimming over the metal like they were precious jewels.

"Maginello has been using _Le Plaisir_ to smuggle weapons," Inej stated the obvious, as if testing the words on her tongue would help her decipher the truth. "And from the looks of it, it's been an operation long before today. These guns were probably collected from every port city in Ravka.

"It's a clever guise. I never would have never checked if Kaz hadn't sent us on this job," Inej's brow creased.

Jesper chilled. "You think Kaz has stake in this?"

"No-" Inej paused. "I don't know. But it's profitable. And isn't that what Kaz cares about?" Inej's face collapsed into frustration. "What I _do_ know is that these guns can't make it to the main land," she finished.

"Maybe they're not headed to the mainland."

Jesper jumped at the voice, making for his guns until Inej held up her hand. A tall man melted from the shadows and stood beside her. His expression was blasé as he fiddled with a rifle that he had pried from one of the crates.

"Who's this?" Jesper asked.

He was taller than Inej by at least half a foot and shaped like a jungle cat, broad in the shoulders and narrow in the hips. His acorn colored hair was blown to one side like he'd been climbing against the wind and his expression was poise... but Jesper could tell by the way he stood, his shoulders tense and curved over Inej, he could spring into action at any moment.

"What did you find?" Inej ignored Jesper's question and huddled by the support pillar, discussing with the man in whispers.

Jesper blinked. It'd been years since he was so blatantly brushed off, having been a part of Henrie Howler's for so long. He found he didn't mind it. Genja the Sharp, knife throwing extraordinaire, was best left in Shu Han. Here, he didn't need a spotlight or mask. The only things you needed to survive in Ketterdam were common sense and a loaded a gun.

As luck may have it, he was surrounded by hundreds of them.

Jesper took a mental inventory. There were perhaps fifty wooden crates, each as tall as him and just as wide. From the openings in the slats, he could count twenty guns in each along with stacks of ammunition clips and alternative parts. There were also thirty full gun racks and guns that were padded and strapped to the support columns all the way up to the glowing ceiling, as far as Jesper could see. He estimated that there had to be at least a thousand guns in the room alone.

Jesper gulped.

He'd never seen so much firepower in one place.

Jesper took a bullet out of the open crate and held it in his hand, letting the slim barrel roll around on his palm.

His power was slow at first, just a tugging at the edges of his brain and a burn on his fingertips. His skin began to tingle and he felt a yank on his stomach, like someone had tied a thread inside him, beckoning him to somewhere he'd never been before, and every time he had to fight the urge to run away. To remember that, through these abilities, the world seemed clearer somehow.

Jesper could feel each granule of gunpowder inside the bullet, each element that the powder was made of, every milligram of sulfur and saltpeter. The bullet was hand packed, set to the perfect temperature of rest. The casing was also handmade, smelted instead of stamped the way modern bullets were usually manufactured, and seamless. Obelisk was an artist.

Jesper dropped the bullet it back into the crate. The clink echoed around them like the room stretched into eternity.

When the door to the chamber opened, its old creaks shooting through Jesper's body like a fever. Jesper drew his pistols and took aim... only to find Wylan van Eck in the threshold with a horrified expression on his face.

"W-what is this?" Wylan stuttered.

" We need to head to the Crow Club. Now." Inej said, resealing the crate and double checking to make sure everything was the way they found it.

Inej shoved them out the door. In the dim light, Jesper could see that Wylan's finger tapped relentlessly on his vest, as he had done in the ball room while speaking with Belinda. After what they'd seen, everyone was on high alert.

Whatever Jesper had expected when he decided to come back to Ketterdam, discovering an illegal gun smuggling operation was not one of those things. After the Ice Court, he and the others had sworn off international conspiring. An oath, as it turned out, would soon be broken. Jesper could feel it.


	8. Chapter 8

**KAZ**

"Pavlov, Lucian Oleg," Anika reported to Kaz. "He's been a mercenary for the past five years, beginning in Os Alta and branching to Eames Chin after the war. Before he joined with _the Wraith,_ he was employed with Pernek Trading Company as a navigator-"

Her voice faded into the background as Kaz chewed on this information. He had kept tabs on Inej _,_ even after she'd become the most famous slaver hunter on the sea. He knew the profile of every member of her crew, when they left and returned, how full their coffers were... he also knew that Pernek Trading Company dealt in more than wares and textiles. It was too big of a coincidence that Lucian, someone who used to be _employed_ by the slavers, showed up right when what Kaz suspected was an undercover slaving ring was making its rounds through Ketterdam.

And Inej would rather be dead than consort with slavers. Kaz knew. Which meant she was unaware or that Lucian was lying to her. Either option sent a white hot anger through his blood.

Kaz gripped his crow's head cane so hard that the weighted metal dug into his palm. The pain was a reprieve. It had been a while since he'd been this angry, and anger made him irrational. To win this battle, he couldn't afford to be distracted. Which was exactly when Anika waved her hand in front of his face.

"I'm not blind," Kaz snapped. "What?"

Anika paused, contemplating her next words. "Well, considering you asked me to dig up _all_ of the information on him, I thought you'd want to know this. It's from a while ago, though. From before the war's end."

"Out with it."

"It seems like Lucian Pavlov spent his childhood at-"

The door to the meeting room burst open and Kaz almost drew his guns before he saw who the intruders were. Wylan, Jesper, and Inej tripped over each other as if they'd just run miles with the dogs of hell on their tails. They bickered among themselves at first, one talking over the other in order to get the first word. Their voices echoed throughout the office and Kaz pinched the bridge of his nose to calm himself and drown out the noise. He hadn't realized how much he'd enjoyed the quiet.

Leaning nonchalantly against the far wall was Lucian Pavlov himself, who'd trailed in after Inej. He wore tattered sailor's boots, a cutlass on his hip, and an open collar despite Ketterdam's chill, three obvious signs that he was a foreigner. Though he stood at the back of the fray, Kaz could see the calculating beneath his stoic eyes; he took the room in with one glance, noting exits and anything he could use as a weapon. At any moment, Kaz knew that Lucian would be ready to fight, regardless of the fact that he was merely a fish in Barrel rat sewers.

Inej was the first to collect herself, clearing her throat. " _You-_ " Her voice was raw and her eyes flicked to Anika, who stood in front of Kaz's desk at the ready. Inej narrowed her gaze. " _We_ need to talk, Kaz. Alone."

Anika audibly ground her teeth.

"You got something to say?" Jesper stepped towards her with his hand over his pistols.

"I do. You have no right to speak here," Anika spat. "Not after running off on the Dregs like dogs from a rainstorm."

"This doesn't concern you, Anika," Inej said.

Electricity crackled between them. Kaz could feel it on his naked hands, a current of something sinister and deadly pulling on every hair on his body. If Anika and Inej crossed blades, only one person would leave unscathed. He wasn't sure who it would be. Anika had the Dregs behind her. But Inej once knew all of Ketterdam's secrets and stood by an ace shot, the richest mercher in the world, and a navigator who, judging from his fierce expression and half-drawn sword, was ready to kill for her. There was no contest.

Inej stood her ground against Anika's venomous glare, eerily still like a totem. Something of a battle cry escaped Anika's lips as she charged across the dark meeting room. Before Kaz could react, before he could even lift his cane, Luca was on her. His movements were quick and methodical: a step forward to gauge distance, rotation on his back foot for leverage, his wicked cutlass pressed against Anika's sternum before anyone could blink.

"Back up. _Now._ " Luca hissed.

There was only silence. Not a regular silence like when the Crow Club was having a slow day, but the ominous, depthless silence after a shootout when dead bodies littered the ground among the pebbles.

Kaz had enough.

" _All of you, get out._ " he seethed, furious.

Anika turned to him, surprise spelled on her face. Lucian narrowed his eyes.

"I don't take orders from you," he spat.

Kaz shoved Anika aside, striking Lucian's wrist with the head of his cane. Lucian's hand went limp and he barely had time to register what happened before Kaz pushed him back. He reveled in the generous _crunch_ of weighted metal against bone _,_ felt it in his whole arm. There was an uproar in the room. Some where behind him, Jesper had cocked his revolver. But all Kaz could think about was broken bones and the rage he felt beneath his skin.

" _You'll leave now, or you'll leave in pieces_ ," Kaz whispered.

If Lucian had been some other skiv off of the sidewalk, he would have known who Kaz was and wouldn't have dared to cross him. Instead, Lucian was a skiv from Ravka who'd spent months at a time out at sea on _the Wraith,_ with tougher skin than most. He jut out his chin in defiance, despite the incredible pain he must have been in as Kaz jabbed his crow's head cane further into his chest.

Hours seemed to passed until Inej expelled a breath in exasperation and walked up to them, pushing the cane away like it was a candle flame and she was a breeze. She whispered something to Lucian and he, in turn, grabbed Jesper and Wylan by their collars, shepherding them out the door.

Anika's triumphant expression faltered when Kaz glared at her.

"But-"

"I said _all_ of you."

If she wanted to add anything, she didn't dare. Anika sheathed her long knife before exiting the way the others came. A rumpus, candle light, and laughter came through the door from the next room, indicating that the night had just begun and the Dregs were on the other side of the wall, dishonestly laboring until the sun came up. When the door swung closed, the musty air of the Crow Club filled Kaz's lungs again and he and Inej were alone.

Kaz had imagined this meeting since he'd watched her sail out of the harbor seven years ago. He'd been so sure that when they met again, he'd be iron by his judgment. He'd done the right thing, though her tears had told him otherwise.

" _Kaz..." Inej had said, her voice quivering throughout the cold, mildew ridden warehouse, with what Kaz knew to be disgust and fear and all the things that he'd thought he'd never hear from her. "There's no coming back from this. This... truly makes you a monster."_

"We know you have stake in what _Le Plaisir_ is carrying."

Kaz's head snapped up, broken from his reverie.

"And that is?"

"Don't be daft," Inej bit, pointing a chapped finger at him. "You've been smuggling guns through Ketterdam. No one else could have pulled this off," her face screwed up in anger. She paced to the other end of the room, her fury evident... until it wasn't. Inej just sank down on the edge of the desk and buried her head in her hands. Like all of the toll of seafaring crashed down upon her in a giant wave and he was seeing what was left of her, washed upon the shore. It seemed that the sea had not treated her well, despite her reputation and the good she had done for the world.

When Inej spoke again, there was no anger in her voice. No malice. She almost sounded like the Inej that he'd known in his youth. Tired and searching for something to believe in again.

"Kaz..." she started, running her hand through her loose hairs. "This... This is not just a couple of thousand _kruge._ This isn't the Ice Court or the Merchant Council.International arms smuggling is serious business. You could go the Hellgate. Or worse."

Inej's voice was sorrowful, like she was truly a wraith mourning for something that she had lost. If Kaz could have done anything to prevent the betrayal that slashed itself across her face, an ugly mar if not for a second, he would have. But he knew that no matter how much he refuted her, told her that he had no idea what she was talking about, she wouldn't listen. It had been seven years since she'd listened to him last, and that killed a small part of her, so much so that she had to leave him and Ketterdam behind. So why would she listen again?

" _The pain was my own!" She had said in that warehouse. "For me to deal with and understand. And I was content with that. I was healing. Slowly, but I was. But you've stolen that from me. And what should I have expected from the greatest thief in the Barrel?"_

" _I won't apologize," Kaz was stone. On this he would not move._

" _Of course you won't," Inej sneered, deliberately avoiding the body that lay in the corner, broken. "Kaz, when will you learn that we're in this together?"_

Kaz was so lost in his violent memories that he didn't realize that Inej had taken a few steps towards him. When he looked up again, she was only an arm's reach away. Kaz held his breath. Inej was like a muscle memory. Her scent washed over him and his body automatically relaxed. The ache that was embedded in his bones disappeared, like her very presence forced his body to calm, to realize that here, in this room, he wasn't in any danger. His eyes drifted close until he felt her fingers brush his cheek. Kaz wrenched himself away.

His heart pounded in his ears. Kaz was sure she could hear it. But Inej only looked on from beside the desk, her hand still outstretched toward him, her face drawn up in confusion. Kaz could only imagine what Inej saw before her. They'd been different people when they parted ways. She, filled with renewed purpose and vigor, and he with a sense of power, of ownership and agency that he'd never known before. The best versions of themselves. At least, versions that were on their way to being better.

And now he could scarcely stand her touch. Kaz almost laughed at the irony.

"You said there were guns on the ship? How many?"

"Hundreds. Probably a thousand or more," she answered, a flicker of doubt spelling itself across her face. She surmised events of the day and Kaz absorbed the new information like he absorbed everything else: like it was a puzzle. Kaz categorized the players: the wraith. The mercher. The shot. And new players like Jesper's contact who worked on the floor of _Le Plaisir_. And, as much as he hated to admit it, Inej's second in command, Lucian Pavlov.

"How did he know where to meet you?"

Inej stopped in the middle of her report and whipped her head up towards him. He hadn't realized how much taller she had gotten.

"Who?"

"Lucian. In the storage room."

"We have a signal," Inej explained. She held out her arms as if she were walking. And to a normal set of eyes, it would have seemed that way. But Kaz saw the minute seconds when she stopped her arms at zero, thirty, and ninety degrees. Like a compass.

"It's for when we're staking out a slaving port," she continued with her demonstration, adding foot and head movements that Kaz had yet to decipher. "This conveys our intended destination and other things, like time, without being conspicuous."

"What if you're restrained?"

"It works for that, too. There's adaptations we've come up with for every occasion."

Their small talk ended and silence once again fell on them. Inej cleared her throat.

"Kaz..." Inej paused. "What did you _think_ was on _Le Plaisir?_ You suspected something. You wouldn't send us on a useless errand. There was an end destination. Something that you wanted to find. What?"

 _What, indeed,_ Kaz thought to himself. Yuffino Sol had been running for Onkle Felix for at least three months, Kaz knew that much. And assuming that Marshall Maginello's partnership with him had been going on that long, crossing with the number of guns and the fact that _Le Plaisir_ had only broken water a few days earlier, Kaz knew that there were big powers a play. No one could have pulled off such a feat if they didn't have money to burn.

After the great war ended, many of the blue blooded families had been killed off or stripped of their wealth through funding efforts for the crown. There was only a hand full of people that could be Maginello's accomplice, and Kaz had that list memorized. A plan knit itself together in his head. He almost didn't hear Inej speak to him one final time.

"I'm going to need the truth from you, Kaz," Inej began slowly. "Because right now, it's not me you're hurting. I could live with that. But it's Nina and we can't afford to not work as a team."

Kaz looked at Inej. Truly _looked_ at her for the first time since he'd almost shot her, Jesper, and Wylan the night before. That had been in the cover of night, but Kaz could see now, in the dim light of the Crow Club, that this Inej wasn't the Inej he was familiar with. The Inej before him was a revolutionary who didn't believe in the world, and so fought with blade and secrets to make it a world worth believing in.

"I'd purchased a cabin on Le Plaisir as soon as I received the letter, Inej. There was no question," Kaz said, skirting her and shoving Anika's intelligence file into his coat. Inej had shown no sign she'd seen it. She simply stared at him, her mouth hanging open in surprise.

"Do you think so low of me? That I would even think twice about helping Nina?" Kaz asked.

"I... I don't..." Inej stuttered. "But how is that possible that you don't know about the guns? The Dregs own Third Harbor."

"Why is it so hard for you to believe me?"

Inej stilled, her casual stance hardened as she crossed her arms over her chest. Kaz could almost hear her walls being built, brick by brick.

"The last time I believed in you was one of the worst mistakes of my life."

Kaz stumbled back. If she stabbed him it would have hurt less. The pain in his knee tripled and he could barely stand, but Kaz grit his teeth and made for the door. He kept his eyes ahead of him, not trusting himself to turn back around.

"We board _Le Plaisir_ at sunrise," he said. "With its scheduled stops, it will take a week to circle the Great Sea before we land in Os Kervo and the ship ends its maiden voyage. In that time, I don't imagine we'll have much trouble collecting what we need.

"But..." Kaz paused, his hand on the door knob that separated them from the outside world. "Inej. I won't make promises that I can't keep. I never have and I never will. At the end of all of this, regardless of what King Nikolai has in store for us, regardless of the endgame, we might not find her alive. Are you ready for that possibility?"


	9. Chapter 9

**NINA**

When she first felt again, it only darkness.

She wasn't sure where it was or when, but she felt it. Around her like a shroud and inside her like a parasite. Her body falling apart and coming together all at once. It snaked beneath her skin and coiled around her limbs, chaining her to the ground but keeping her outside herself so that she would never know rest.

She thought about many things at first. About the old ones. The tall one and the golden one. The one who lived in the shadows, the one that didn't have a shadow at all. And the one who stood like a wall, infallible and strong, whose warmth she had felt leech back into the earth until he was as cold as he'd been the first day they'd met. She thought about her deep, deep sadness as she ripped a hole in the ground for him and lined it with all of his favorite things and how that if she truly loved him, she would have found a way to keep him safe.

But she didn't.

So what did that make her?

She also thought about the new ones. She didn't know them like she knew the tall, golden, or shadowed ones, but she knew that their verve and their torchlight cleared a pathway in the night so that those in bondage might be free. She heard thousands of tiny foot falls, saw the juxtaposition of scarred skin on white ice and felt all the good things she'd stopped feeling since he'd died fill her in a sort of wave, washing up and through her until she could see again.

She thought of the hand she had once held, strong and callused, dependable and true. If she closed her eyes, she could almost feel that hand again.

But she couldn't be sure if her eyes were closed or if she'd finally died. She could never tell. Not in the dark.


	10. Chapter 10

**WYLAN**

When Wylan van Eck found himself on the top of Van Eck Holdings' corporate ladder, he was as alone as he'd ever been in his entire life. More so than when he believed his mother had died. More so than when his own father had him tortured, no holds barred.

He'd been alone all of his life, but there was something unique about that particular loneliness. Everyone around Wylan was a shark in the water, a possible predator to the empire he'd began building for himself and his mother. Wylan found that he could keep no one close. He'd even buried his past as a Dreg, as it was a weapon that could be used against the legitimacy of his business. No one ever knew the real Wylan van Eck. No one knew that he had spent a good chunk of his life as another person, transformed by _jurda parem_ and Nina's Grisha abilities. No one knew about his grand escape from the Ice Court, or his hand in the second outbreak of the Queen's Lady Plague, or that, despite his money and power, he still couldn't read or write worth a damn.

No one knew how uncomfortable he felt when standing in the ballroom, being stared at like bucket of chum.

It was the morning of the launch of _Le Plaisir_ out of Third Harbor, just past nine bells, and the main floor of the luxury liner was almost completely packed. After checking on Ronnie, whose fever had gone down but was still bed ridden, Wylan had ventured to the ball room and immediately regretted it. Everyone stared at him, their eyes widening when they realized who he was. They held up their fans and whispered to each other, some not so softly, speaking gossip and words that Wylan had heard a million times before. But after years of tea parties, soirees, and company appearances, he still wasn't used to it. He didn't think he'd ever be.

Kaz had not contacted them after he'd stormed out of the Crow Club the night before, so Wylan didn't bother looking for him as he roamed the hall, taking in his surroundings. There were two pairs of enormous guards standing in front of both the ball room doors to the deck and the passageway that he'd followed Jesper and Inej through the night before. The mere thought of that storage room and it's contents sent cold shivers down his spine.

The last time he'd seen that kind of artillery was in Fjerda, but Wylan never would have thought he'd see something like it again. The only thing that could come with that kind of firepower was trouble. Wylan was familiar with Obelisk, being as they both held a sizable stock in the world's economy. Obelisk didn't trade in the black market. Wylan was sure. So whoever had supplied the guns was not a licensed dealer, but a con artist. Mental ticks went off in Wylan's head, names of people he needed to contact to keep this contained. Yes, he was aboard a sea vessel, miles from any kind of transmission tower, but there was no limit to Wylan van Eck's reach.

After a while the flow of passengers finally began to slow and Wylan let out a sigh of relief. He could feel the knot in his stomach loosen and his shoulder's relax. Though the people around him still gossiped among themselves, Wylan phased out their voices to a low mumble.

 _Why am I so worried?_ He thought to himself. _I'll be fine._

"Sir van Eck?"

Wylan knew that voice. They'd just met the day before, but Wylan knew it. The ticket girl walked up to him with a giant smile on her face. Instead of her tight bustier and voluminous skirts, she wore a demure pair of trousers and a vest, which, instead of blending her into the crowd, made her stick out like a sore thumb. While everyone around them was dressed in their best frock coats and finery, she looked like a stable boy.

Wylan couldn't help the grin that spread across his face.

"Please," he said. "Call me Wylan."

"Of course," the girl held out a hand. "And call me Belinda."

An hour must have passed of just the two of them walking around the ball room together, absorbed in each other's company. In truth, Wylan was glad to have someone to talk to. Belinda was a wonderful conversationalist. He learned that she had been on her own since she was eleven, after her parents died during the Great War. Since then she'd hopped caravans and took on odd jobs all around the world. Wylan could only imagine what such adventure would be like. His business meetings took him all over the world, too, but he could never enjoy what was in front of him. Not like Belinda could.

"... and that's what took me to Shu Han, where I met Jesper."

"Wha?" Wylan made an unintelligible noise. He'd been so lost in his thoughts that he didn't catch what she was saying.

"At Henrie Howlers. They're a performance troupe that tours along Sikurzoi and sometimes into bordering Ravkan villages. Jesper and I got hired there on the same day. We've friends ever since. Kind of."

Wylan squashed the slow burn of jealousy that ate at his insides. He'd not thought about Jesper since meeting Ronnie. In fact, Wylan had not thought about anything having to do with Ketterdam in years. But since returning, Wylan couldn't think of anything else. It infuriated him.

"What do you mean 'kind of'?" he asked, flagging a waitress for a drink.

Belinda's face crumpled slightly at the edges. To anyone else, her smile had never gone away. But Wylan could tell that she was a kind of person who was used to keeping a joyous disposition, no matter how she was truly feeling inside. It came with her job, he supposed. It also probably came with years of fending for herself, something that Wylan could relate to, except his weapons of choice were improvisational bombs rather than smiles.

"We... got into a fight yesterday," she began. Wylan handed her a tumbler and she downed it in one go. He was mildly impressed.

"About what?"

"I..." she paused, as if unsure of whether or not to tell him the truth. "I can be kind of pushy, you see. I know this... I mean, he and I, we've talked about it before, but he always treats me like I'm a stranger even though we've been together for years and all I asked was how you two know each other and now he's angry and I don't know what to do."

Wylan blinked. Belinda hadn't taken a single breath during her tirade. She reminded him of Jesper in that way. Jesper had always run at a more concentrated frequency than everyone else, something that they later found out was because of his suppressed Grisha abilities, which only amplified his attention deficit. Belinda's energy was strikingly similar and it made it easier for Wylan to say what he wanted to say.

"Jesper's always been like this about his personal issues. Just give him space and he'll tell you what you want to know when he's ready."

What Wylan said wasn't much, he didn't think, but Belinda's tears disappeared. Her sadness shed off of her like a second skin and her face seemed to glow despite the red blotches on her cheeks. Her smile warmed Wylan up like candle light, further loosening the knot in his stomach. He knew immediately why she and Jesper were so close. Belinda drew people to her. She couldn't help it.

They walked out onto the deck, watching Ketterdam shrink behind them as _Le Plaisir's_ fog horn blew, signaling their take off. From the open water, the city's Third harbor looked charming with its picturesque view of government district bathed by sparse morning sunlight. Wylan scoffed at it.

"What are you thinking about, Sir- I mean, Wylan?"

"A lot of things, I suppose," he whispered, almost to himself. He finished off his drink and handed it to a passing server.

"Like Jesper?"

Wylan stared at her, shocked.

"Sorry," she said, holding her hands up. "Pushy, like I said. You don't have to answer that."

Belinda looked back onto the water and Wylan internally scolded himself for being so upset with her. The question was innocent enough. She'd meant no harm and he'd stopped caring about Jesper a long time ago. Perhaps it wouldn't hurt to tell her their story.

"I knew Jesper when we were both young," Wylan started, staring out onto the sea with her. He could feel body heat radiate off her, like she was a furnace. Wylan grinned. Another thing they had in common.

"We were... He was important to me. We ran with the same crowd, kissed boys we shouldn't have, got into some trouble. But... things happen when you grow up. Sometimes you grow apart, too," Wylan didn't realize the truth of his words until he said them aloud.

Silence fell upon them. In the brightening morning, the water shone a bright blue that reminded him of Ronnie's eyes, and the brackish breeze of the last high stakes seafare that he'd been on. Except that boat was dead quiet and here there were plenty of people roaming the deck around them, but Wylan didn't mind. For some reason, after her outburst and his confession, he felt lighter.

Wylan noticed, however, that Belinda was anything but. Her eyes flickered from side to side, watching each socialite who passed them and whispered behind gloved hands. When they did, she tucked the red hairs that escaped her braid behind her ear and discretely straightened her vest. Her fingers were bitten to the quick and a sheen of sweat stained her collar.

"Might I ask what's wrong?" Wylan inquired.

At first Belinda said nothing, just wrung her hands and continued looking out onto the water. A blush crept over her pale cheeks and Wylan found himself surprised. He didn't think someone like Belinda could be embarrassed.

She took a deep breath, but her words wavered. "I'm afraid, mostly. That people will find out what a fraud I am," she said. "I mean, this is the most prestigious job I've ever had. I'm not sure if I deserve it."

Wylan thought on this a bit. He watched Belinda breathe some more, her cheerful mask reappearing but her eyes still like glass.

"If there's anything I've learned, especially from the last few years and returning to this place, it's that people are always going to judge you. It's the truth, Belinda," Wylan began. "Because of your name. Because of what you look like. Because of the person you love," He looked up towards the highest cabin in the ship, thinking about Hieronymus, sleeping soundly in their bed. "But... I think as long as you live without regrets, striving for the life you want, for this prestigious job that you _earned_ , with nothing and no one to thank but your _own_ hard work and sacrifice, what they say doesn't have any credence, does it?"

Wylan felt something wash over him. Was it contentment? A little bit of hope since he'd picked up that letter on his forgery desk three days ago? He wasn't sure. He knew that, despite seeing Jesper and reopening a wound inside of him that he now realized hadn't fully healed, this trip was so much more than bringing Nina home. It was about facing his demons, the ones that prevented him from loving Hieronymous like he wanted to. The ones that made him believe his mother would disappear right before his eyes, even though he'd done everything in his power to rid the world of those who would hurt them. The demons that kept him bound to who he used to be: a tiny, scared, boy on the streets of Ketterdam.

Belinda smiled up at him, and Wylan had another thought. If anything, he will have left this trip with a good friend, and what wrong was there in that?


	11. Chapter 11

**JESPER**

Out of the corner of his eye, Jesper saw Belinda, who'd donned her casual clothes after her shift, and Wylan laughing with her on the deck. He huffed to himself. Sure, Belinda was free to make friends with whomever she wanted, but that didn't mean Jesper had to like it.

He turned back to polishing glasses and breathed a sigh of relief that the evening rush was over. Instead of demanding drinks and horderves, the world's finest were loitering among each other, engrossed in tales of their financial conquests and business prowess. At least, that what he assumed they were talking about. He couldn't be sure, what with the ball room of _Le Plaisir_ buzzing with so much chattering that Jesper could barely hear himself think. He spotted Kaz up on the second landing at a card table and scoffed. Little did everyone know that the Bastard of the Barrel was among them, and _his_ corporate kingdom was perhaps the most extensive of all... And he didn't even have to pay taxes for it.

Jesper saw that Kaz was sitting across from Marshall Maginello and his heart began to race, remembering the stockpile of guns deep beneath their feet. Jesper had run through it all in his head, wondering why someone like Maginello would need that much firepower. Did it have to do with Ravka? Revenge against a bankrupt state, a King that promised him and his ilk grand futures beyond the military but, come the end of the war, didn't have the means to give those futures? Did it have to do with Ketterdam, the Crown Suits, and it's gangs' never ending war for territory? There were too many factors and not enough clues to truly understand.

"You're looking sick, Jesper," a strong hand clapped him on the back. "Let me take over from here."

Caspar was one of the bartenders, and Jesper wasn't sure how to feel about him. He was a few inches taller than himself, something Jesper didn't think was possible. He was dressed like the rest of the wait staff, but something about the golden skin that peeked out from his white smock and the way his red hair smoothed back from his face made him seem like he didn't belong there. Jesper was sure he even saw the remnant of an ear piercing, too, a hole that seemed in the process of healing over but probably held a hoop or a jewel of some kind. Good servers didn't have ear piercings. And unlike the rest of the staff, who were in various states of distress, their collars partially unbuttoned or their sleeves pushed up to their elbows, Caspar's trouser pleats were still impeccable. He was barely breaking a sweat as he transferred a bin of clean flutes to the shelving behind the bar. Jesper hated him.

"Fine," Jesper replied, throwing a dish towel at him, frowning when Caspar caught it without even looking up. He deposited his apron below the bar and made his way to Belinda's quarters.

It wasn't until he was halfway there that Jesper realized he was still mad at Belinda, and that meeting her upon her return to her rooms was the last thing he wanted to do. He didn't know why he was so mad. Belinda had always been the inquisitive type, had been for the majority of the time they've known each other. But when she barraged him with her questions, Wylan standing just by the register counter, Jesper had felt his frustration bubble over. Frustration at her for being so caring, frustration that Wylan was clearly in love and Jesper had yet to move on with his life. And frustrated that, even after, because he didn't want to be indebted to Wylan van Eck, he had no room to stay in now. Jesper pinched the bridge of his nose and wished he was back in his ragged tent in the frigid cold of Shu Han. Anything would be better than ripping open wounds he had thought were closed.

"Hey mommy! It's Genja the Sharp!"

Anything... but that.

Jesper whipped his head towards the voice and saw a small boy pointing at him in awe. The boy was dressed in a silk tailored suit, holding the hand of a short, stocky woman in a dress designed to make her look taller than she actually was. She flipped her fan open and closed, clearly doubting her own eyes.

"Nonsense, Bartholemew," the woman said, staring at Jesper incredulously. "He's just a server. Why would a street performer from Shu Han be here?"

Jesper's shoulders tensed. He shoved his way through the crowd, away from the boy and his mother, but the buzzing of the ball room grew into a thunderous cacophony of voices and the walls of the hall seemed to close in on him. The boy in the silk suit cried to his mom that he _wanted_ a show and that she _must_ buy it for him, that he _never_ asks for anything, and that she was the _worst_ and he wished she were _dead_ and if Jesper had his Obelisk's in his hands he probably would have shot the kid on the spot.

"Oy, Chap!"

Jesper jumped as a beefy hand grabbed his shoulder; A rotund man walked up beside him, his face red as if it took significant physical exertion to catch up with Jesper, who could feel every digit of the man's hand dig into his skin and smelled the awful cologne that drenched the man from head to foot. Like everyone around them, the man was dressed in a finely pressed suit made of a material that seemed to glitter under the electric lights. He might have been smiling at Jesper, but he couldn't tell what was going on behind the man's bushy mustache.

"My boy tells me that you're that sharpshooter from Howlin' Harry's," he said enthusiastically.

Jesper's eyes darted left to right, unsure of what to do. When he performed, he wore a mask. The probability of running into someone who'd seen his show, in addition to them recognizing him was astronomically low. But here he was, on a boat with some of the richest people in the world, maskless and dressed like a waiter, and he'd been got. Jesper looked the young boy in the eyes. His face was alight with admiration and idolization and Jesper couldn't find it within himself to say no.

Jesper sighed.

"Henrie Howler's. And yes."

A cheer erupted around him. Strangers threw him questions at a rate he couldn't keep up with. What brings you to _Le Plaisir?_ Can I have your autograph? Can you shoot an apple from atop my head? Without spotlights, Jesper could see every face around him, could gauge every expression that expected him to be some sort of celebrity, a larger than life entertainer rather than an ex gambling addict from Noyvi Zem.

"So can you?"

Jesper snapped from his reverie and looked at the fat man who still had a hand on his shoulder.

"Can I what?"

"Can you give us a demonstration?"

Time stopped. Everyone cleared a path like they were land and the target, which someone had pulled out of thin air and set on the opposite end of the room, was the unsea, cleaving the crowd in half. Even the people up on the V.I.P. deck above had stopped to stare. Jesper could feel Kaz's glare like a knife to his neck.

Jesper didn't know who handed him the guns, but one minute he was staring helplessly at the target and the next he had two revolvers in his hands. They belonged to someone in the audience, Jesper could feel their warmth like they'd been tucked away in someone's belt for the night. He could also tell that they were knock off Obelisks just by touching them. It might have been his fabrikator blood. It might have been because he owned a true pair of Obelisks himself. But he didn't need genuine guns to hit a target.

He clenched his hand around the pistols and the materials the guns began to spin.

"Come on, son!" The mustached man encouraged.

Jesper gulped, looking anywhere for help, for an escape.

"Mommy, why isn't he doing anything?!" the boy complained.

Jesper raised the first pistol, already red hot in his hands. He thought about Nina and he thought about his life on the plains. He thought about dead mothers and fathers and shot like he'd never shot before.


	12. Chapter 12

**KAZ**

Kaz had learned to play Pontoon when he was a child, after Jordie had died and he was a new recruit with the Dregs. At first he would just watch the pigeons from the roost in the Crow Club, hidden in the darkness in a way that only a cripple could. The general rules of the game were easy enough, but what he had struggled with was bluffing. Sometimes his lies were too obvious and sometimes they were too subtle, but they came nonetheless and Kaz had learned to be the best at it and lied as easily as he breathed.

Sitting on the too plush seats of the VIP card tables, Kaz tried to think about this as the croupier dealt him his fifth dead hand of the night. Purposefully losing at the card tables was _like_ lying, he supposed, but that didn't mean he had to like it.

"My hand," Maginello laid out his cards in a flourish, winning him a polite applause from the players around them as the dealer pushed their cheques towards him with a paddle. This applause was a rouse. Maginello had just taken thousands of _kruge_ from them, and merchers weren't accustomed to losing. One such mercher, with a slicked beard and bald head, had turned red in the face.

"That's your third win tonight, Maginello," Kaz said, taking a tumbler from a passing waitress. He downed it in one gulp and stared into the crystalline china. "Luck is on your side."

"There's no luck to it. We played this game often in the First Army," he replied, refusing a glass of champagne offered to him. Kaz noted this. Marshall Maginello hadn't drank a thing all night.

"You served?" the bearded mercher beside them asked. Kaz piqued his eyebrow, feigning ignorance.

"I did," Maginello confirmed, clearing his throat. "I fought on the front lines for ten years until the Sun Summoner obliterated the Unsea. By then I was an old man, and old men can't fight the wars of the young."

"What do you mean?" asked the same mercher. He scratched his long beard inquisitively. "The Sun Summoner ended the war."

"Well," Maginello started slow like he was trying to find a way to explain it to a child. "When the Darkling and the Unsea were around, they were our enemies. We were united against one cause. And I knew how to fight those enemies. Well." Maginello said. "But wars of borders? Of people who breath and bleed like us? I just don't understand it. It makes them no different from us, and makes those who fight these ridiculous wars no different from the volcra."

Silence washed over the table, save for the chattering around them and the occasional shot from Jesper's outrageous shooting gallery on the floor below. It was clear that no one at that table, save for Maginello and Kaz, had ever had to deal with the reality of war. It made sense, in a way, because Ketterdam was an island and dominated by the university district, where the rich came to learn because they could afford it. The Unsea wasn't a threat like it was in Ravka. People who lived on Ketterdam were fat and their coffers were full, unlike their cousins on the mainland who lived on infected soil that would have died if Alina Starkov hadn't been sacrificed.

It's something that Kaz always kept in mind, something that made him better than the old fogies that sat around him who listened to Maginello's words like it was scripture, like if they listened hard enough that would mean that they could claim stake in the war, too. Though Kaz might not have been in the army, he knew suffering and he knew pain and the battleground that was Ketterdam. And he was better for it because all of those things made him stronger.

Kaz gestured with his cane to the croupier, who cleared the table and laid down fresh cards. Before the game had even started, Kaz had replaced the decks with his own customized cards that, with the slightest change of the backs in the illustrative designs, designs that Kaz had memorized, he could tell which card was which color and suit. He could also tell that, though he wouldn't win the next few hands, luck would be in _his_ corner for the remainder of the night.

Around eleven bells, it became obvious to the merchers around them that they weren't going to win any games. They stood up with what was left of their dignities and wallets and walked away from the table. The lights to the VIP balcony dimmed and a smooth brass number played from down below. The whole ball room was sparse and those who remained lowered their voices. Even the dealer was packing up and soon the only people left at the card tables were Kaz and the leader of the Crown Suits, Marshall Maginello.

They didn't talk to each other for a while. Kaz patiently sipped on a fresh glass of brandy, reveling in the burn in his throat that too many years of drinking caused. Maginello stacked his cheques nonchalantly and cleaned the undersides of his fingernails with a steak knife. Jesper had stopped shooting, but Kaz could see him in in his peripheral talking animatedly to Wylan and a woman dressed like a paper boy in the corner. Eventually, it was Maginello that broke the silence.

"So what is Dirtyhands doing on a pleasure cruiser? Don't you have skulls to smash in Ketterdam?"

"You know me?" Kaz swirled the amber liquid around in his cup.

"How could I not? Even though our friends haven't had the pleasure," he tossed his head over to where the merchers they were playing with had coalesced on the seating along the wall, their words hushed and their eyes darting to Maginello. "I suppose I should be honored that the Bastard of the Barrel has graced me with his presence, but the only thing I can feel is concern."

"Oh? Concern for what?"

"Concern that you've shown specific interest in me."

For the first time, Kaz looked at Maginello. Truly looked at him, without pretense and assumptions and saw an old man who had clear eyes. He was not paranoid. There was no mania. Whatever he was doing, whatever he had planned for the firearms beneath them at this very moment, he did it with a clear conscience. Kaz couldn't decide how he felt about this.

"So then you know that my team is keeping tabs on you," Kaz said. Maginello didn't flinch. "And will be until this ship meets land. We expect you to be on your best behavior. Your deal with Onkle Felix rides on it," Kaz didn't actually know the details of this deal, but Maginello didn't need to know that. The only trump card that Kaz had was that they'd discovered the cache of weapons before _Le Plaisir_ had set sail. For all he knew, the deal with Onkle Felix wasn't related. Until he found out otherwise, there was no need to reveal all of his cards.

Maginello's face steeled and for a split second Kaz saw what he had thought Maginello would be: someone indifferent enough to trade in slaves and daring enough to do it in front of him. But as soon as it had come it was gone. Maginello's face softened. A smirk spread across his chin and he was a harmless veteran who was using his savings to go on one last vacation. Maginello chuckled and waved a hand in the air like he was swatting away a fly.

"I didn't peg Dirtyhands as a babysitter."

"And you are anything but an infant."

The two Barrel bosses stared at each other. The silent shadow of the ballroom surrounded them like an ether, the undulation of he waves beneath them gently shaking the chandeliers that hung above, throwing around shadows that made Kaz think of ghosts. He'd never been the superstitious type. But after almost thirty years, he wasn't so sure anymore. What ghosts surrounded Maginello? How many men had he killed? Surely more than Kaz himself, and Kaz had plenty of skeletons in his closet.

Twelve bells rang out and Kaz upturned his drink, gently placing the crystal on the felted surface of the card table. The sound was like a gunshot in the night.

"Until tomorrow."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that," Maginello replied, picking his teeth with the same steak knife as Kaz pushed past him. "This is a large ship. So easy to get lost."

Kaz allowed his cane to take the brunt of his stride as he made his way down the stairs of the VIP balcony. When he was on the ballroom floor, he slid his hands over the hidden pocket that he'd sewn into his coat, where the cheques he'd lifted from Maginello as he was leaving the card table not moments before clanked together with his uneven steps. Such a close range dupe would have given him joy his younger years, but the only thing Kaz could think of was how, while he was observing Pontoon from the roost of the Crow Club instead of pillaging like the rest of the Dregs, he'd gone hungry for a week and almost died.

 _Greed may do your bidding, but Death serves no man,_ Inej had once told him. Pity it took him ten years to finally understand what she meant.


	13. Chapter 13

**INEJ**

Inej couldn't be sure about how late it was as she soundlessly made her way through the lower corridors of _Le Plaisir_. Here, there were no windows unlike the more lavish corridors on the upper decks. But that certainly wasn't where Marshall Maginello was staying.

As the orchestral music faded behind her, Inej was surrounded by dim lights and silence. Unlike the hidden passageway that she'd been in earlier, the one that led to the room of firearms, this hallway was dry. The carpets were bright red and the walls were adorned with sconces of flickering lights meant to imitate fire, and a garish wallpaper that reminded Inej of dry grass. She had memorized the master guest list earlier when Jesper was having a heated argument with the ticket girl, and that list brought her to the last room of the lowest hall, where only the most cost efficient opted to stay.

Inej heard the occupants of the room next door and her heart began to race. She crouched down and set to work on picking the lock and she wondered why she was so nervous. Luca was just up the hall, keeping a look out and was instructed to intervene if anyone made their way towards the room. And if anything did get past him she was certainly able to take care of herself. So why did breaking into the room of a gun smuggling gang boss affect her so? She'd certainly done worse.

When the lock slid into place itsounded like canon fire. Inej slipped into the room. She wasn't sure what she was expecting, but a normal, dare she say _tidy_ bed chamber was not one of those things. It was exactly like the room Wylan had procured for herself and Luca, even down to the ridiculous flower printed bed sheets and Inej was wondering if there was any difference at all. If the patros above were paying for the amenities as Marshall was below, it was the most egregious of cons it and almost made Inej smile.

She began looking in the drawers, anything that pulled out of the walls and anything that slid open, searching for clues as to the details of Maginello's plan. Save for the pads of paper stamped with the Lantsov double eagle, some pens, and ink pots, Inej saw nothing out of the ordinary. She ran her hand along the door frame and between the mattress and springboard, checked the underside of chair and the writing desk that was attached to the wall. Nothing.

Inej dragged the chair over to the closet and stood up on her tip toes to inspect the top shelf, and deep into the recesses of the closet, hidden in the shadows under a some extra towels and sheets, Inej found a bag.

Specifically, it was a seabag, similar to the ones that her crew used when storing clothes and personal items on _the Wraith._ Except this one was secured with a thick chain and padlock instead of a mariner's knot. Inej made quick work of it and carefully emptied the bag of it's contents.

There were a lot of the same shirt and trousers, black and made of a thick wool that would have kept away the cold and moisture, a knife that had rusted through, and a pair of boots that looked like they had seen their fair share of tread, and a nondescript journal at the very bottom of the bag.

It was small, no bigger than her palm, possibly made to keep on the front lines which made sense as Maginello was once a soldier. It certainly looked like it could have been. The pages were buckled like it had been dropped in water at some point and the corners were shaved down from being turned too many times. Pressed under the cover was a stick with a sharpened, charred end. The carbon ash almost made Inej sneeze and reminded her of the incinerator at the Ice Court. She frowned and flipped through the journal.

The first pages were filled with notes, coordinates that Inej couldn't decipher and penmanship that looked like chicken scratch. Towards the middle of the journal Inej noticed some doodling. It wasn't much at first, just some shapes that lined the edges of each page. But those shapes turned into elaborate still life sketches of trees and animals, each rendered with so much detail that Inej could have sworn that the fox blinked at her and the tree swayed in an invisible breeze.

The whimsicality threw Inej for a loop. Then she turned the page.

Darkness. Each page thereafter was filled with angry coal strokes that almost ripped the paper underneath it. Within these lines were drawings of decrepit, winged beasts with razor sharp teeth and depthless eyes. Beings that might have been human at one time, but were so shriveled and emaciated that she wasn't sure. And though Inej had never been to the Fold, she knew that these were sketches of the Volcra.

Up close details of their teeth, notes on their movement and sketches of what looked like feathers sprouting from skin, ghastly wounds and scarred skin. There were also a technical drawing of what looked like large sail boats on planks, what Inej assumed to be the main mode of transportation across the Unsea. There were biological charts and graphs and a sketch of what looked like some kind of nest. This one looked so realistic that Inej could almost hear them screeching, their wings flapping around her like a murder of crows.

When Luca knocked at the door, Inej all but jumped from her crouch. After staring at the drawings for so long, she began to see things in the shadows of the room that unnerved her. She gripped the blade that was attached to her waist. _Sankta Alina_ was in its place and Inej breathed a little easier.

"Cap, we have incoming," Luca whispered from the other side. "Get a move on."

Inej She flipped to the last page and didn't think anything of it. It was almost the same as the last, the angry strokes of coal marring the page and the negative space held a portrait. Only it wasn't the Volcra, it was a woman. A beautiful woman with long curls and a strong brow. Her button nose and cheeks would have been flushed if they weren't sculpted in black and white. Inej wondered who this woman was and squinted at the drawing, holding it up to the light. When her heart dropped she shook her head in disbelief, hoping her eyes were deceiving her.

The blood drained from her face.

It was Nina.

Nina in the throes of torture, surrounded by shadow and a silent scream tumbling off of her lips.

Luca knocked at the door again and Inej hurriedly replaced each item into the bag, mentally checking that everything was as it was when she had entered the room in the first place. The click of the padlock was as loud as the first, but Inej couldn't think about that now as she shoved the bag back into the closet, burying it under the appropriate linens.

Her mind raced. Why did Maginello having these drawings? How did he know Nina? And did the images hold any truth? The royal adviser's letter said that Nina had disappeared in Ravka, but the Unsea had been destroyed for almost fifteen years now and Maginello hadn't been on Ravkan soil since he was discharged from the First Army. It made no sense.

Inej gave the room one more glance over when she noticed the pad of paper that sat atop the side table. She hadn't noticed it before but now the lamp light caught the surface and revealed subtle grooves on the surface. She squinted her eyes at it, willing the indentations to form letters, but Luca knocked with more fervor and Inej ripped off the first sheet and shoved it in her vest. If Maginello had anything to do with Nina's disappearance, it wasn't a coincidence that they were on the ship, too. She wasn't sure how it was all connected, but she knew how to find out. And it involved a man named Dirtyhands.


	14. Chapter 14

**JESPER**

Jesper couldn't remember the last time he'd shot like this, one bullet after another, countless rounds of reloading and cocking and reloading again like the motions were programmed into him and he was just a conduit for some kind of divine purpose that he couldn't even begin to understand. Where every target hit would solve problems on a grander scale than him avoiding the attentions of celebrity hungry socialites and their spoiled children. Jesper could feel his nerves melting away until his fingers were numb, long before he ran out of bullets and picked up throwing knives. Jesper threw those like he would die if he stopped.

Only after every stuffy billionaire had left the ball room floor, after every candle had been blown out and all of the lights were dimmed, did he stand still, feeling the reverberation of the last knife as it sliced through the air, striking true. The target was mangled, the bullseye just a hole in the wall that he was sure he would have to pay for, somehow. Jesper let his head hang back, his breath ragged. He just couldn't seem to miss. He wasn't sure if that was a good thing anymore.

Jesper's blood sung and the lights around him glittered. Using his Grisha power always made the world more focused, more small in a way, cradling him like a mother who spoke encouraging words to an infant. Was this how she had felt when she was alive? When she healed others and took poison into herself so that they might live, did the lights dance for her, too? Did they now, wherever she was? Did this power connect them in some way, even after death? Jesper hoped so, because it would make the pain in his chest worth it in the end.

His heart was racing in double time, pounding so loudly that he was sure the bartender could hear it. He could feel every bead of sweat slide down his skin and every labored breath leave his lungs. He felt the far away dips and crests of the waves underneath _Le Plaisir_ , could hear incandescent light bulbs murmur in a cacophony of noise, like cicadas on a summer night. Everything around him had such _presence._ It was intoxicating. Almost too much so.

When he preformed with Henrie Howlers, the mask he wore as Genja the Sharp not only helped him keep his anonymity, but also helped him shut out these sensations: the cold from the open ballroom door that chilled him. The vibrations from the water outside that shook his bones. Without the mask, the only thing Jesper could do was crouch in a feeble position to block out the blinding lights and electricity that was so loud he could barely hear his own thoughts. He was sure he would go insane... Until someone placed a hat firmly on his head.

Jesper craned his neck to see who his savior was, but the hat slid down his nose. He heard a tinkling giggle that he would have known anywhere. Jesper tipped the brim of the cap and saw Belinda, her cheeks flushed and her casual clothes emitting cold like she'd just come in from the outside. A strand of her red hair had fallen down from her braid, but Belinda wasn't the kind of person to worry about those things. Instead she plopped down on the ground next to him, her legs akimbo, not a care in the world.

"You're glowing, Jes," Belinda breathed, her smile radiant. "Saints, you're impossibly good at that. It's almost like magic. Everyone felt it."

"I used to love that kind of attention. When I... in a different life," Jesper responded without thinking, the words tumbling off of his tongue. Ketterdam had never been something he liked to talk about. But it was the only thing he could say to her and it didn't bother him as much as he thought it would.

"I wore flashy Kerch suits and I entertained myself in places that I knew I couldn't afford. But now... I don't know. Its not as exciting when people are expecting things from you, you know?"

Belinda didn't say anything in response. Her silence was as loud as the lights and Jesper looked over to her, trying to gauge her mood by the inquisitive expression on her face. But Belinda just took his hand and squeezed and he wondered what he'd done to deserve someone like her. Someone who knew that the tangle of emotions in his chest couldn't be explained away or rationalized by words. With his power fully awake and buzzing through him, Jesper could feel every ridge of her finger prints, the pulse of her heart beating beneath her skin in a steady staccato that tethered him to the earth.

"You're not mad anymore?" he asked tentatively, rubbing her cold hands between his.

"Of course not," Belinda smiled "What are best friends for?"

Jesper matched that smile, tooth for tooth.

"That was... impressive."

Wylan van Eck appeared from the ether and Jesper wondered if he'd been standing there the whole time. Belinda put a reassuring hand on his shoulder and Jesper breathed in slowly, meeting Wylan's eyes. In the dimmed light they were black, but Jesper knew their true color intimately.

"Brings back old memories, doesn't it?" Jesper joked awkwardly, pullilng the bill of the cap lower on his forehead.

"I'm going to go to bed," Belinda made a show of stretching her arms. She winked at Jesper, kissed him on the cheek, and sashayed to her quarters on the other end of the ballroom. Jesper stared after her. He didn't notice that Wylan was talking to him until he said Belinda's name.

"She's something, isn't she?"

"Yeah, she is..." Jesper said this to himself more than anything.

He was aware of what Wylan probably saw. It was what everyone saw when they met Belinda for the first time: a vivacious, bright eyed Kaelish woman who was the embodiment of light itself. Someone who was kind and thoughtful, who still believed in the goodness of man but was strong in her convictions. She didn't let Jesper get away with anything, including pushing her away when she knew when he needed her the most. It was hard not to be infatuated with her. Jesper could tell that Wylan, for however short the amount of time they'd spent together, felt this way, too.

The Grisha high that Jesper had been on was dulling at the edges and he wasn't sure what to do. Under the dimmed lights, he stood about eye to eye with Wylan, something Jesper didn't think would have ever been possible. Wylan stared back, unblinking, and Jesper's breath caught in his throat. Wylan's ruddy curls were thrown into a mess of a halo around his head, his lips red and swollen. His cheeks, like Belinda's, were flushed a deep, rosy pink, almost like he had a fever.

"You got taller," Jesper said. He mentally slapped himself.

Wylan scratched the thin beard smattering his chin. "That's all you have to say?"

"Well it wouldn't be polite to kiss you hello, would it? Not with your ward waiting upstairs," Jesper bit back, insulted by Wylan's accusatory tone. Jesper didn't owe anyone anything, and that included Wylan van Eck. When he'd left Ketterdam, Jesper had made sure that his ledger was clean.

Jesper turned his back on Wylan and made his way to the bar where the closing barkeep was polishing dishes and eyeing them suspiciously. Jesper glared at him and gestured for a glass of something strong. The barkeep slid a snifter towards him that was filled to the brim a thick, viscous liquid. Jesper heard Wylan hurried footsteps behind him.

"He's not waiting like a dog. He's fallen ill," Wylan corrected, his voice proud. "And he's not my ward, he's my _fiance._ "

Jesper froze. _Fiance._ The world echoed in his head. He felt a deep seated burn in his chest and he realized it was shame. Just days ago, Jesper himself had been at Wylan's brick house in Ketterdam to... what? To ask after him? To see how he was doing? To admit that he thought about Wylan every night for months after leaving that Saints forsaken city? And all that time he'd had a fiance and Jesper had been the only one thinking about the past.

Jesper didn't know what he expected would happen when he met Wylan again. Maybe he had wanted Wylan to be as miserable as he had been. Maybe he'd wanted Wylan to have stayed short and skinny, depressed from their last fight, even four years after the fact. But the Wylan who stood behind him was broad in the shoulders, the muscle under his fitted suit flexed even though he stood still. His eyes were lined with crows feet despite the fact that he was only twenty-six, and his nails were immaculately trimmed, even on the hand that ran through his hair in frustration. The Wylan before him wasn't who he used to be, and that made Jesper even more angry.

"I'mglad you're _so_ happy," Jesper drawled, rolling his eyes and downing the glass of sludge that the bartender gave him. It burned on the way down, but Jesper didn't let up. "Money suits you, Merchling," he spat, using the pet name that the Dregs had developed for Wylan when they'd learned that he was the runaway son of one of the richest merchers in Ketterdam.

Jesper delighted in the falter of Wylan's composure. He'd struck a nerve, and the victory felt as sweet as shooting at a target he couldn't miss.

That high was nowhere to be found and the only thing Jesper could think to do was to down another drink. And another. After a while they went down so smoothly that Jesper forgot he was basically drinking the same thing that fishermen used to clean barnacles off their hulls.

He was sure that he'd scared Wylan away. Jesper upturned his fourth shot, bitter. Wylan's voice came from behind him. It was even and calm.

"Just because I chose to leave this life doesn't mean I ever regretted us, Jesper," he said.

Jesper expected him to continue, to try and convince him that he should be forgiven for the events surrounding Colm Fahey's funeral, the events that tore them apart, to ask for some kind of clemency, but he didn't. When Jesper turned around, Wylan van Eck was gone.


	15. Chapter 15

**WYLAN**

Wylan met Joshua at the top of the stairs and they made their way back to his quarters. He was acutely aware of his pace and the rhythm of his breath. It was imperative that he seem completely normal in front of his butler, even though on the inside his heart was beating as fast as a Suli drum.

No matter how nasty Jesper had been to him Wylan couldn't be mad. Jesper had the right to be angry, what with the way their relationship had ended all those years ago. Wylan didn't understand it at the time. They had both been twenty-one and Jesper's father had just died. Wylan didn't know how to console him. After all, when his own father had died, it had barely summoned a tear. Jesper had been distraught and depressed and like a child Wylan had thought his new found wealth and power could solve his problems.

It had taken Wylan a lot of soul searching to see he had been wrong. He threw himself into work and only by dealing with merchers who were as ruthless as gang bosses, merchers who knew and lived by accounts and balances, the delicate teetering of the world's resources that kept it from descending into chaos, did Wylan realize that his and Jesper's relationship had been a lopsided one. It had been five years since they'd met, but the Jesper who had lost his father wasn't the same Jesper he'd fallen in love with.

 _That_ Jesper had been someone who denied his powers and was drowning in the red. But it was like his father's death had been a second coming for him. _This_ Jesper walked a little taller. Held his head higher and taught himself that some wagers weren't worth the loss. This Jesper had cleared himself of his debt and was working, daily, to live in a way that would have made his late father proud.

It was only Wylan that had stayed the same. And it wasn't until he was alone that he was able to change.

When he'd finished a long days work, Wylan liked to spend time with his mother. Marya Hendriks loved to paint and dance in the tall grass fields of the Southern Colonies. Wylan was amazed by her. She still knew how to smile despite what she'd been through and, after a few years, she'd bestowed this same talent on her son. Her robust laugh filled Wylan's conscious, clearing the barbs that Jesper's words left on his skin. Wylan took a deep breath and climbed the last flight of stairs before his quarters on _Le Plaisir._ He was ready to sleep until the sun rose again.

"Is something on your mind, sir?" Joshua asked, his steps in time.

 _What a question,_ Wylan thought to himself. He rubbed the spot on his chest where his heart still beat with troubling fervor. Wylan could feel it against his palm, like the reverb of gunshots _thump thump thumping_ against his skin. He ignored Joshua's question and continued down the hall, eager to see Ronnie and to make sure he was okay.

Wylan turned the doorknob and knew there was something amiss immediately. He didn't spend half a decade with the Dregs not to learn what a lock felt like after it had been picked. Wylan gestured to Joshua, a quick flick of his wrist that sent the old man in and out of his own quarters, returning with a pair of Obelisk revolvers in his hands. Wylan took one, checked the barrel, and pushed the door open, gun trained in front of him to subdue whoever had the gall to break into the room of Wylan van Eck.

When he saw who it was he supposed he shouldn't have been surprised.

"Guard the hallway, Joshua," Wylan said. He shut the door carefully behind him as to not make any noise and tip off Hieronymus, whose off tune humming came from the behind the bathroom doors.

Lounging on the chaise, his bum leg stretched out in front of him and his pale, spider like hands grasping his crow's head can, was Kaz Brekker.

Wylan quickly turned off the lights. He went to every window and pulled the curtains closed. Even in the highest cabin of an enormous sea vessel in the middle of the open see, Wylan could never be sure who was watching.

"What the _hell_ are you doing here? We agreed to meet tomorrow morning," Wylan whispered, glaring at him.Kaz hadn't seemed to gauge his tone. He circled the room, poking at various things with his cane, but Wylan wasn't a fool. Dirtyhands never missed anything.

"And I decided to change that time. Did the door maid have any information?" Kaz asked in a way that sounded as if he already had the answer.

Wylan breathed carefully to calm himself. He knew plenty like Kaz Brekker. At one point he thought the Bastard of the Barrel untouchable. His dark silhouette had intimidated him and his intelligence even more so. But Wylan had learned a few things when the Ice Court Crew had been scattered across the globe, and he wasn't about to give into fear: Kaz's most reliable tactic.

"Her _name_ is Belinda. And she doesn't know anything. No one does," Wylan whispered, forcing his voice to remain level. He combed through their conversation. Since Wylan had been interrogating Belinda, he had to position them on the deck, which was cold as ice but empty, as the roaring wind had chased the upper crust inside the ball room. There was no way that anyone could have heard them.

"As far as the other staff knows, their only purpose is to circumvent the Great Sea. They were paid half in Shu Han and Geren, and they will be paid again upon return to Ravka," Wylan threw his vest on a chair and scrubbed his face with his hands. A sliver of guilt dug into him; Belinda had been so earnest in her conversation, so forthright with information. Though Wylan had no illusions as to why this was, he could still feel bad about taking advantage of her need to impress a young, rich mercher who seemed interested in her company.

Wylan shook his head. "Keep an eye on the bartender, though. The red headed one with the golden eyes," Wylan said. "His name is Caspar. He's the only anomaly. Someone who can't be accounted for. Belinda said he was hired before the rest of them boarded the liner on the west coast of Shu Han. Possibly before _Le Plaisir_ was even launched."

"Is there a reason he should be of note?" Kaz asked, attention piqued. "Any strange tendencies or movements?"

"Not really. He does his work like the rest of them and is friendly with the staff. But since he was on the ship before the majority of the crew, he might be privy to its secrets. Or have an in with the captain," Wylan's eyes darted from Kaz to the steam billowing from beneath the bathroom door. Kaz smirked and Wylan immediately felt like he was sixteen again.

"Does your boyfriend know about the company you keep?" Kaz taunted.

Wylan steeled. "Hedoesn't need to know things that would frighten him."

Kaz limped to over to him and Wylan steeled. The light from behind the curtains slipped in and out of space with the swaying of _Le Plaisir_ , highlighting Kaz's sharp corners in a way that truly made him look like a demon. _Demjin,_ Matthias had called him. Kaz didn't say anything, but his silence spoke chapters and Wylan's imagination went on overdrive. What would he do to keep Wylan silent? Cut out his tongue like he tore out Oomen's eyes? Ruin his name, his prospects? All of the world's wealthiest and influential were on _Le Plaisir._ It would be too easy. But Kaz Brekker did none of these things. He simply clapped his hand on Wylan's shoulder and made for the door. A cordial gesture that confused Wylan and Joshua even more so when he saw Kaz leaving a place where he'd never should have been able to get to in the first place.

"You can't lie about your past, Merchling. Take it from an old man who has more skeletons than a gravedigger," he said over his shoulder. The moonlight slashed across his face in a scar that illuminated his black eyes. Wylan shivered under their dead stare. "Sometimes the dead don't stay buried." And with that, he disappeared.

It wasn't until after Ronnie got out of the shower and threw his arms around him that Wylan thought to check himself. Both of his cuff links, his Obelisk revolver, and the velour vest that he'd thrown on the chair were missing. Wylan swore, but felt a deep truth dawn on him. Something that no amount of merching, traveling, and learning could have taught him. Kaz Brekker had no equal. His game was one of fathomless plains and he was the only one able to see where their journey on _Le Plaisir_ would end.


	16. Chapter 16

**KAZ**

It was just past four bells when Kaz returned to his room on the third subdeck of _Le Plaisir_ and tossed Wylan's vest, revolver, and cuff links into the armoire. The merchling had learned, that was for certain. He had to have learned, having run around with the Dregs for as long as he did. But no matter how sore and creaky Kaz got in his old age, the richest mercher in the world was no contest for him.

Limping over to the tub in the far corner of the room, he twisted the plated spigot that protruded from the garish wallpaper and stared into the steaming water that poured from it. How easy it was now, even on the open sea, to access hot water. It had once been a commodity as valuable as gold. Now, it's free flowing wispy tendrils snaked through the air simply because Kaz turned a knob on the wall. _Le Plaisir_ was the pinnacle of technology, a trophy of opulence and wealth that Kaz could practically smell. It smelled like, corruption and _kruge..._ all the things that made the world go round.

Kaz stripped and soaked his bum leg, his mind combing through everything that had happened thus far.

 _This is a large ship,_ Maginello had said. _So easy to get lost._

Kaz had been threatened enough to know when to take one seriously, and this threat was not idle. Kaz made a mental list of who to keep track of if things went awry. He double and triple checked the memorized map that floated about in his head, paths to every possible exit, the locations of the life rafts, as well as the paths to each entrance of the main ballroom. He'd studied the floor plans from top to bottom and knew all the names of the staff and crew of _Le Plaisir_ before they had even set sail.

He'd tasked Jesper with using his connection with the door maid, Belinda, Wylan had called her, to recon the inner crew tunnels of the ship. The storage cellar, the one that housed Maginello's hidden arsenal, wasn't on any map that Kaz could find. Even at the Windsor family estate. If something that large was undocumented... What else was _Le Plaisir_ hiding? Belinda would turn out to be more useful than she seemed.

Wylan had been doing what he did best: being rich. Kaz had watched him from the upper roost the whole night. He, along with his butler, a graying man with a deceivingly young physique, flitted around the ballroom, rubbing elbows with every socialite and mercher on the floor. Wylan probably didn't realize that he was a natural. His eyes lit up, his posture changing and accommodating to every person he came into contact with. Kaz wasn't sure when it happened, or where, but it seemed that their merchling had grown into his own... and was turning out to be the most valuable asset on this job.

And Inej... he didn't know what she had been up to. Kaz never gave her an assignment. He avoided talking to her, really. He thought that he was doing her a favor but it was clear when he saw her at the bar with Luca at her side, sizing up the crowd and playing the role of a hired server, that she didn't need any favors from him. She had moved around the floor of the ship the same way she'd moved around the front room of The Menagerie when he'd first met her. Silent and smooth, incognito to those around her, even when she was right next to them, absorbing every piece of information she could.

Kaz sunk deeper into the water, willing the scathing heat to chase away the the distant memories that flooded his mind, when there was a knock at the door. He froze, turning off the faucet and carefully getting out of the tub. His leg screamed in protest but Kaz ignored it and wrapped a dry towel around his waist. He fetched the Obelisk revolver from the closet. No one knew where his room was. The way he'd purchased it was untraceable. He hadn't even told Inej where it was, though he was sure she could easily find it.

Checking the barrel of the gun, Kaz slowly inched his way towards the door. The knocking became more fervent and the door knob was violently wrenched from side to side. Kaz pointed his gun forward, ready to incapacitate whoever had the gall to knock on his door.

" _Open this door, Kazzy. I swear to the saints!_ "

The voice made Kaz's hair stand on end. He flipped the safety on the revolver, tossed it onto the side table, and wrenched the door open. Kaz glared at all five foot two of Rosette Windsor who huffed and puffed at him for a reason he couldn't begin to fathom.

The heiress stormed into the room like she owned it and Kaz supposed she did. Her father did, anyway. Kaz checked the hallway for anyone who might have seen her and shut the door when Rosette rounded on him. Her eyes glistened with what looked suspiciously like tears.

"My father practically built this damn boat, Kaz Brekker," Rosette swore, answering his unasked question. She jabbed her lace gloved finger in his direction. "I can find out whatever I want. Including the fact that my boyfriend rented a trans sea voyage on _Le Plaisir_ without even telling me."

"Rosette... we are many things: business partners, the occasional fuck," Kaz stepped towards her, menacingly planting his elbow flat on the wall behind her so that she was trapped between him and the side table. "But I've never been anyone's boyfriend."

Her eyes suddenly went wide as she slipped under his arm as if just realizing that Kaz was essentially naked save for the damp towel around his hips that hugged the form beneath it. She backed up, averting her eyes. A deep red blush spread over her face.

"Tickets for _Le Plaisir_ are purchased months in advance. Years in some cases. You acted like you didn't know anything this morning. But... given what you do you've probably known about my connection to it for at least that long" she whispered, the hurt in her voice sounded genuine. Kaz couldn't be sure. She eyed the revolver on the side table but closed her eyes, exhaling with some unsaid emotion. She turned to face him again.

"But you never asked me to stay. Why lie to me when us seeing each other would be inevitable?"

"Nothing is inevitable. It's a big ship and it's easy to get lost."

Rosette's voice wavered. "I don't think you've ever been lost for a day in your life, Kaz Brekker."

Kaz sighed and pushed his hair back from his forehead. He was tired, but there was no way that Rosette would let him sleep until she got whatever answers she was looking for. Kaz managed his way to the tub pulled the plug from the drain and watched the hard won water, still steaming, as it swirled down the drain.

When Kaz undid his towel and let it drop to the floor, he heard Rosette exclaim an unintelligible noise.

"Oh? Don't act like a maiden now, Miss Windsor," Kaz smirked, advancing on her until she fell back on the bed. A tinkling giggle tumbled from her lips. Her bright blue eyes wide with mirth, her earlier annoyance forgotten. It didn't take much to subdue the heiress of Windsor Current. Just a clever word and a kiss and she was putty in his hands.

"Well why can't I be one? A woman as well as your lover?" Rosette probably meant to sound commanding, but her breathy voice held no substance. Kaz ran his bare hand down her neck and quickly undid the clasps that held the front of her dress together. Her bosom burst through the fabric and Rosette had the grace to keep her sound effects to herself this time. Her skin broke out in goose flesh wherever Kaz touched her, and he knew before he lifted her skirts that she'd be half there already.

"Wait, Kaz, I need to-"

He delved forward despite her protests, teasing her flushed skin with his mouth and finding a sick joy in her attempts to suppress her moans. They'd done this before. More times than Kaz could count. But in addition to her vehement objection, the strain in her thighs as she tried to close her legs even as she grew slicker and wetter by the moment, Kaz sensed something was indeed amiss.

"I- I have something to t-tell you-"

Stepping away from her, Kaz pulled her skirts back down over her knees. He picked up the discarded towel at the foot of the tub and wrapped it again around his waist, waiting for her to collect herself.

"Well?" Kaz walked over to the bar shelf along the wall and poured himself a tumbler of whiskey. "If you aren't here for the usual, say your peace and leave. Your father will likely have the whole liner searched if he discovers that you're missing, especially at this hour. And I don't fancy explaining to Harvey Windsor why his half naked daughter is in my bed."

For a while Rosette didn't say anything. The silence itself was words enough. Whatever she wanted to tell him, it was important. Minutes seemed like hours and just as Kaz entertained the idea of throwing her out so he could go to bed, Rosette Windsor sat up, her chest puffed out like tropical bird claiming its territory. Her ample breasts spilled over the undone clasps of her bodice and she rose unsteadily to her feet. She went to him, her gloved hands grabbing his behind and pulling him close to her. Her body ground against him and Kaz hissed as he became as stiff as a rod. He gritted his teeth but it was no use when Rosette buried her face in his collarbone, her breath burning on his skin. Kaz seized, revolted by the sudden contact. When she trailed her wet mouth down his chest, he didn't move.

"I saw you talking to that girl, the pretty one at the bar. Do you know her?" Rosette nipped at him, undoing his towel with the other hand.

"Why would I know her?" Kaz breathed, finding the feeling in his limbs in time for her to grasp his manhood in her palm. He attempted to back away from her only to hit the bar and knock his whiskey onto the carpet. The scent of aged alcohol permeated the air, tangy and sharp. It cut through to his other senses but Kaz was held in place by Rosette's grip.

"More lies. You don't talk to _anyone_. Unless you want something from them. I know you, Kaz Brekker," Rosette's voice shook as she stroked him. "But it seemed like she knew you more. And that makes me angry. Tell me the truth."

Kaz didn't speak. Rosette worked on his hardened member, her skillful mouth like her silk gloves, soft and tight and custom made to fit. There was no noise but her ardent tongue and his growl as he exploded into her mouth. He shoved her away and picked up the dropped tumbler glass, refilling it with whiskey that he swallowed whole. He felt every inch of the burn in his throat and tried to find words that he had never said aloud before.

"I-" Kaz caught himself. He didn't owe Rosette Windsor anything, much less an explanation. So why did he feel so compelled to speak?

"I loved her," even he had to force the words past his lips, he knew it to be true. "I'll never stop loving her, I think. In this life there are good people and there are monsters. No middlers. No inbetweens, contrary to common belief. And..." Kaz swallowed another glass of whiskey, the liquid a lubricant for his words. "Inej Ghafa is the most lawful good, unguardedly honest and foolishly selfless person I've ever known..." Kaz upturned two more shots, grateful when he finally felt the dull thrumming on the edges of his consciousness that alcohol provided. "The only person to see me as anything but a monster."

When Kaz turned around he found Rosette staring at him, those glistening eyes from earlier full of tears that fell down her cheeks like raindrops in a storm. Rosette's voice was resolute and her shoulders were square. She walked towards him and cupped his cheek in her hand. " _I've_ never seen you as a monster, Kaz. Not for a single moment."

Kaz felt anger tear through him. He grabbed her arm and dragged her across the room. She would develop a bruise the next day but he couldn't care. He threw her on the bed and ripped the remnants of her dress from her supple body, discarding the torn fabric onto the floor and he mounted her so that she would see him, _all_ of him, in the electric candlelight that was her blood inheritance. He had frostbite and scars and parts of his skeleton would never heal again. Bullets remained lodged under his skin, hard tumors that had fused themselves onto his musculature and had poisoned his blood. He'd been stabbed and shot, beaten and maimed, but before all of it Kaz Brekker had _been_ a monster, through and through. Only a monster could have survived such a life.

Rosette tried to reach to him but Kaz had trapped her hands above her head, locked in his impermeable grip. He used his other hand to force her legs apart, digging his fingers into her dripping folds. Somewhere in the back of his inebriated mind, he heard a scuff at the door.

"Don't do this, Kazzy. Not now," Rosette pleaded through tears.

"Why _not_ now?... Especially when you _know_ me so well?" Kaz forced Rosette down into the mattress. Tears continued to stream down her face but he didn't see them. Kaz could only see red, even as her hips tilted towards him and the bolt in the door slid away.

Kaz released Rosette and lunged for the gun that he'd thrown on the side table. He flipped the safety catch and pointed it at the door where Inej Ghafa stood, her hands up. In one of them she held some kind of paper and in the other two slim lock picks. She was wearing those damn knubbly rubber slippers that she'd worn in their youth and her obsidian eyes were wide, going back and forth from the gun to the distraught girl beneath him just as Rosette cried and sputtered that she was pregnant and Kaz felt gravity shift, something that had nothing to do with the night time waves that rolled far beneath them, like a monster guiding them towards and uncertain horizon.


	17. Chapter 17

**INEJ**

Inej had always been an early riser, but after what she witnessed that morning at Kaz's quarters she couldn't sleep. Instead, in the cover of the breaking dawn, she scaled the stories-tall exhaust funnel of the ship, which was painted pale blue with the golden double eagle of the Lantsov family emblazoned on the side. When she reached the top she let out an astonished breath.

While she would never agree with what _Le Plaisir_ represented: excess, grandeur, and greed, she could admit to herself that the view from the tallest point of the ship was a sight to behold. The True Sea lay all around her, seemingly endless, an unfathomable chasm that glittered like diamonds and sapphires, camouflaging the dangers in the depths below.

Her crew had survived every hammerhead that mistook them for prey, staved off storms that threw them around like rag dolls. They'd dodged cannon fire, caught scurvy, and executed every ambush only to realize that the most dangerous things were on land.

Inej leaned back onto her elbows, letting the sun warm her and turn her vision bright red. _Kaz was going to be a father_... The sentence barely made sense to her. Her stomach churned and she wasn't sure if it was the altitude or if her body was physically rejecting these words, trying to deny Kaz's new reality... but the girl's hitched cries resounded in Inej's head and no amount of fresh air could convince her that it wasn't true.

Kaz was known as Dirtyhands, but would he try and wash himself clean of this?

Inej witnessed how his hard exterior broke when he heard those words that came out of the pink girl's mouth. In all the years Inej had known him, Kaz had never made such an expression: one of doubt, of anger and confusion... but above all, _fear_.

The Kaz that Inej knew had never been scared a day in his life. He wasn't capable of it.

But it had been almost ten years. Perhaps he'd finally learned.

Inej sighed and took off her rubber slippers, letting her bare feet dangle off the edge of the concrete funnel. The sensation of the wind dancing between her toes reminded her of her of her parents, of tightropes and bonbons by the fire. The memory was fleeting; a concussive exhale of the ship's exhaust sent vibrations throughout Inej's body, indicating that it was just past ten bells. People were awake and exploring the lower decks. Their voices floated up to her from below.

Her ears immediately picked out the high pitched voice of Kaz's girl in the distance. She was talking to someone about how she could order her own drinks and Inej immediately understood. Inej packed the information away in her head and surrendered to the fatigue that overcame her. She spread out her arms in order to soak up more heat from the sun. She would climb back down, eventually, but right now she just wanted to feel the wind at her feet and rest her eyes...

"What's the business, Cap?"

Inej groaned. She had learned early on not to be surprised that her second in command could find her no matter where she was, but she didn't have to like it. The fact that she could never be alone with her thoughts again made her terse. Inej propped herself up against her elbows and glared at Luca Pavlov as he bent over her, resting his hands on his knees. His hair flurried around his head in soft tufts, a jovial grin on his stubbled face.

If Kaz was the shadows, then Luca was the sun. It was an obnoxious metaphor, but the closest Inej could think of. Kaz gave orders and punished those who didn't follow. Luca once ran into a firefight because Inej had suggested it as their best option for a decoy during one of their raids. This either made him extremely loyal or extremely stupid. Inej didn't know which, but even now she could feel the heat radiating off him in waves, warming her much more effectively than hours of laying outside had.

Inej narrowed her eyes at Luca. "You said it wrong. Again," she corrected. "It's 'what business'."

Luca shrugged his shoulders, running his large hand through his unwieldy hair. "Same difference. You Kerch have odd ways of speaking."

"I'm not Kerch," Inej said, but her protest was carried off by the wind and Luca just settled back, letting his head swing in the breeze as if he hadn't heard her.

They didn't say anything to each other for a while. They didn't need to. Luca just _knew_ things. Inej first thought this was some kind of supernatural power when she'd first met him. Luca could out reason the most studied mercher and he knew how every member of her crew was doing and what needed to be said to make them preform at their best. Luca could gauge a stand off and his advice had saved their lives countless times. And when they weren't fighting for their lives, or other people's lives, for that matter, they could just sit side by side and appreciate the sound of silence.

Inej listened as the sun moved up the sky. Below, the captain had been replaced by a loud, dramatic crew member who relayed the same story of how _Le Plaisir_ was the pinnacle of technology and how King Nikolai oversaw every screw that held the ship together and how the saints themselves blessed its maiden voyage.

 _The saints_? Inej scoffed. She thought of the whole reason they were on _Le Plaisir_ to begin with, of the weapons, of the sketch of Nina that she'd found in Maginello's bag. _I don't think saints are involved in this._

"Did you keep watch last night?" Inej finally asked.

"Obviously. Look at these dark circles. They aren't natural," Luca leaned towards her and tugged on the skin on his cheek. Inej smacked him on the head. He beamed and sat back again, basking in the sun next to her.

"I left our room when you didn't come back. Been staked out there since," he said. Inej felt a blush crawl down her neck. Luca propped himself on his arm, looking at her. "No movement. It's like he's waiting for something. Or somewhere."

"Our next stop could be another reup," a possibility dawned on Inej. "Or where the buyer is."

"What makes you think money is motivating this? He could just be crazy."

"When doesn't money motivate things?" Inej thought of Kaz.

"If that's the case, then we'd better get ready," Luca announced, hopping up to his feet with more energy than someone who'd been up all night should have. He pointed towards the horizon and Inej could see the barest sliver of land begin to appear.

"Due north, north west, Captain. We sail on Shriftport in an hour."

A better captain might have made Luca double check his projection with the complex compass that always hung around his neck, but Inej had learned a while ago that it was better to trust Luca with those kinds of things. He was almost always right, like true north was in his blood and navigation was something he could do in his sleep. She simply saluted farewell and slid down the funnel as fast as gravity would allow her. Inej Ghafa would keep an eye on Marshall Maginello, the king pin of the Crown Suits, but before that there was a certain socialite in pink she wanted to talk to... and it was something she would have to do alone.


End file.
